Julie nodded. “I knew right away you had it in you to play the Big Con. Stan, if you weren't already a scientist, I think you could make a great thief.”
It was the nicest compliment Stan had ever been paid.
“And as for you, Captain Hoban …” Julie continued.
“Yes, miss?” Hoban said.
“You're going to have to get that hangdog look off of your face. You're a spaceship captain again, not a washed-up drunk who did something wrong once in his life and is making himself pay for it the rest of his life.”
“I'll try to remember that,” Hoban said.
15
Morning came early to the federal penitentiary at Goose Lake, New York. Almost two thirds of the great gray concrete structure was underground, buried under one of the Catskills. What showed above was a windowless dome, gray as a ghost in sunlight, unrelievedly ugly despite the rows of quick-growing trees that had been planted around its perimeter in an attempt to dress it up. A ten-foot-high electrified fence surrounded the facility, but it was pretty much window dressing. No convict had gotten as far as the fence yet. The prison had its ways of keeping the prisoners docile.
Within the windowless pile, artificial light shone night and day. It was part of standard policy to keep the prisoners disoriented, and therefore less aggressive.
Inside, there were the usual sections of prison cells, with catwalks outside them where the guards walked. There were workshops, food and laundry facilities, and a separate room where the inmates did state-approved work and earned a dollar or so a day for it.
It was free time now. All the men not doing solitary were walking around the grounds, exercising, talking.
A loud voice came from the prison loudspeaker. “All men whose names are on the Alpha Volunteer list, report to the auditorium on the second level.”
The Alpha Volunteer List contained the names of those prisoners with space experience who were willing to volunteer for a hazardous assignment in return for a reduction of their sentences. It had been a while since the call went out for crew. The prisoners were well aware of the good things this early release could do for them. And anyway, it was easier to escape from a spaceship than from a federal prison.
It was not easy getting on the Alpha list, because only a limited number were permitted even to apply. You had to bribe a guard to have any chance at all. And you were likely to have problems with other prisoners who wanted to take your place.
Red Badger had been waiting for this chance a long time. Now he got up, smoothed down his unruly red hair, checked his shoes, and started for the auditorium.
He was stopped by an inmate named Big Ed.
“Where do you think you're going?” Big Ed asked.
“I'm on the list,” Badger said.
“You got it wrong,” Big Ed said. “That last place is mine.”
“No,” Red insisted, “it's mine.”
“Sure. But you're going to give it to me, aren't you?”
“No way,” said Red Badger. “Now, if you'll just let me get past…”
Big Ed stood in the middle of the corridor, blocking Badger's way. “Do like I say,” he threatened, “or else.”
Red Badger knew he was being challenged, knew that Big Ed had been waiting for this moment a long time, yet he also knew that Big Ed had picked him figuring he was the easiest guy on the Alpha list to intimidate.
Badger already knew what he was going to do about it.
He was known as Red Badger because of his shock of coarse red hair. He had the light, easily sunburned skin that went with red hair, and narrow blue-green eyes that blinked at you from behind sandy eyelashes. He was a big man, heavy in the chest. He wore his leather waistcoat open to show his chest with its grizzled mass of hair. He had large square teeth and a nasty smile.
Badger was an alumnus of many prisons. He had gotten his nickname at Raiford Prison in Florida, and as an act of defiance had taken it for his own. Badger was doing time for armed robbery and assault. He had a criminal record that went back a long way. Quick with his fists, he was also quick with his tongue and was always looking for a chance to cause trouble. “Trouble is my real middle name,” he liked to say. “Let me show you how I spell it.” And then he'd punctuate his remark for you with his fists. Like the badger, his namesake, he was most dangerous when cornered.
The fight was to be held according to the accepted prison rules: just the two of them, having it out in one of the washrooms. Whoever was still standing after it was over would go to the auditorium. The two combatants went there silently.
Both men knew it did no good to be brawling in the corridors. There were stingray projectors with motion- indicator finders mounted in all the corridors, turning steadily and scanning in all directions. The stingers weren't fatal, but they hurt like hell and could be counted upon to whip recalcitrant prisoners into line. There were no projectors mounted in the washrooms.
Although it was never talked about, the prisoners figured the authorities wanted to leave them places where they could have things out for themselves, establishing who was top dog and who was underdog. Several of them, noticing where Badger and Ed were going, followed along to watch the fun. It had been known for some time that Big Ed was going to try to take Red's place on the Alpha List. Big Ed was a seven-foot freak from Opalatchee, Florida. A bodybuilder, he looked like a model for Hercules, all gleaming muscle as he stripped off his shirt. Red Badger, on the other hand, was a solid man, but his musculature was well padded with fat. He looked slow, not formidable.
Stripping off his shirt, he stood in the middle of the shower space, looking fat and sleepy, his hands loose and open at his sides, waiting for Ed to make the first move.
“You sure you want this?” Big Ed asked, moving forward slowly, hands raised like an old-fashioned bare- knuckle fighter. “Ain't going to be much left of you when I get through.” He looked at the spectators and laughed. “I'm gonna skin me a badger today, boys.”
The men laughed dutifully. Big Ed suddenly lunged forward, and Badger responded.
People said later they'd never seen a big fat man like Badger move so fast. One moment he was standing right there, practically under Big Ed's fists. But when Big Ed attacked, Badger was already out of the way, dancing back. He easily eluded a roundhouse right, and, taking his time, delivered a blow to Big Ed's neck, catching him at a nerve junction on the right side.
Big Ed bellowed and moved back. His right arm was dangling awkwardly at his side. He strained to lift it, but could get no sensation into it. He wasn't hurt; not really. It was just that his right arm wouldn't lift.
“Where'd you learn that stunt?” he demanded.
Badger smiled but didn't answer. What good would it do to tell Big Ed that his most recent cell mate, Tommy Tashimoto, had taught him the fine art of nerve strikes — getting him to practice for hours, hitting over and over again from all angles until he could strike half a dozen targets unerringly where the nerve bundles were near the surface or rode over bone.
Red Badger hadn't been one for formal education. But when he got a chance to learn how to incapacitate a larger, stronger opponent, all the doggedness of his character came out, and he had worked until he knew what he was doing.
Now he circled around Big Ed's right, hitting him quick hard blows to the face and ribs, coming in over the dangling and useless right arm. Big Ed tried to launch himself at Badger. If he could just get his hands on him, even one-handed, he'd tear the smaller man apart. But Red had a strategy to offset that. He hit again and again at the nerve junction in Ed's neck, and soon the numbness was replaced by a galloping pain that traveled up and down Ed's shoulder, from his face to his groin, filling him with an agony so painful as to be exquisite.
At least Badger thought it was exquisite, because he saw he had his man where he wanted him, helpless
