But Meek wasn't watching Luke. His eyes were for the crowd and even as he pressed the firing button he saw a hand pick a bottle off the bar, lift it to throw. The gun in his right hand shrieked and the bottle smashed into a million pieces, the liquor turned to steam. Slowly Meek backed away, his tread almost cat-like, his weak blue eyes like cold ice behind the thick-lensed spectacles, his hunched shoulders still hunched, his lean jaw like a steel trap. He felt the wall at his back and stopped. Out in the room before him no one stirred. Luke stood like a statue, gripping his right hand, badly burned by the smoking gun that lay at his feet. Luke's face was a mask of hatred. The rest of them simply stared. Stared at this outlander. A man who wore clothing such as the Asteroid Belt had never seen before. A man who looked as if he might be a clerk or even a retired farmer out on a holiday. A man with glasses and hunched shoulders and a skin that had never known the touch of sun in space. And yet a man who had given Luke Blaine a head start for his gun, had beaten him to the draw, had burned the gun out of his hand. Oliver Meek heard himself speaking, but he couldn't believe it was himself. It was as if some other person had taken command of his tongue, was forcing it to speak. He hardly recognized his voice, for it was hard and brittle and sounded far away. It was saying: "Does anyone else want to argue with me?" It was immediately apparent no one did. II Oliver Meek tried to explain it carefully, but it was hard when people were so insistent. Hard, too, to collect his thoughts so early in the day. He sat on the edge of the bed, white hair tousled, his night shirt wrinkled, his bony legs sticking out beneath it. "But I'm not a gun fighter," he declared. "I'm just on a holiday. I never shot at a man before in all my life. I can't imagine what came over me." The Rev. Harold Brown brushed his argument aside. "Don't you see, sir," he insisted, "what you can do for us? These hoodlums will respect you. You can clean up the town for us. Blacky Hoffman and his mob run the place. They make decent government and decent living impossible. They levy protection tribute on every businessman, they rob and cheat the miners and prospectors who come here, they maintain vice conditions...." "All you have to do," said Andrew Smith brightly, "is run Blacky and his gang out of town." "But," protested Meek, "you don't understand." "Five years ago," the Rev. Brown went on, disregarding him, "I would have hesitated to pit force against force. It is not my way nor the way of the church ... but for five years I've tried to bring the gospel to this place, have worked for better conditions and each year I see them steadily getting worse."