"They don't talk much about me, I guess," he began. "It's a pretty ordinary story, anyway. I was in the war, with my own squadron. We ran into some bad luck, combined with a set of orders that got mixed up. I lost my men. I lost a leg, too." He leaned down and slapped his right thigh. It rang with metal. "I didn't enjoy that. While I was in the hospital, they brought charges against me. I wasn't given time to prepare an adequate defense, and they threw several paragraphs of the book at me. I was dropped a rank in grade, and slated for duty at a procurement office. I got my break, then. The Marties, under Kull, hit the Moon at practically that time." I remembered that. They'd gotten a toehold and established a forward base, and Earth had started getting hit with atomic missiles. "All of a sudden, anybody who could walk or be carried into a ship was tossed into a raggle-taggle fleet the TSN dredged up. That included me." He grinned, "Only they made two mistakes. The first one was in thinking I still owed Earth any kind of a debt. The second was the bigger one--they gave me a crew raked out of every brig and detention barracks in the fleet. I guess they didn't think I was fit to command anything else." He grinned. "Pat was in a Wasp unit attached to the base. I took her along." * * * * * He waved his hand at the men in the mess hall. "Some of my original crew are still with me. I simply headed for the Belt, and sat out the war. The boys didn't mind one bit. We had plenty of stores, and they knew nobody would bother us while there were more important things going on. Afterwards--well, we've done all right." He had. Some of the freight lines bribed him. Some didn't. Uncounted millions in rare minerals were scattered among the tumbling rocks of the Belt, but nobody dared to mine them. He'd given refuge to the stragglers from Mars' broken navies, and built a kingdom on blood and loot. "I know what I'm called on Earth," he said. "I'm a butcher, a brigand--all the names there are. Even another fighting man, like you, Holcomb, thinks I'm a renegade and a traitor to humanity for throwing in with the Marties. Well, they're blind, Holcomb!" His open palm came cracking down on the table. "They can't see that Earth is rotten to the very marrow in its mis-shapen bones, that any system that would do to a man what it did to me is based on stupid bungling! The war--Holcomb, you were in that, you know it was the most useless piece of imperialism the System has ever seen." He was staring intently into my face. I did him the favor of keeping my expression blank, but if he expected me to nod, he was going to wait a long time. I couldn't help thinking of Mort Weidmann. Mort left an arm on Mars; he wasn't bitter about that, and he didn't think it had been a useless war. It had been the Marties for System bosses or us, and they wouldn't have been gentle overlords.