"Hi, gov'nor," he called out, his voice still cheerful. "I had odds
you'd beat the ticket, though the Mother and me were worried there for a
while. How'd you grease the fix?"
Gordon sketched it in, without mentioning Security. "What happened to
you, Izzy?"
"Price of being honest. But the gees who paid me protection didn't get
hurt, gov'nor." He winced, then grinned. "So they pay double tomorrow.
Honesty pays, gov'nor, if you squeeze it once in a while ... Funny, you
making sergeant; I thought two other gees won the lottery."
So the promotion _had_ come from Trench! It bothered him. When a turkey
sees corn on the menu, it's time to wonder about Thanksgiving.
* * * * *
Collections were good all week--probably as a result of Izzy's actions.
Even after he arranged to pay his income tax, and turned over his
"donation" to the fund, Gordon was well ahead for the first time since
he'd landed here.
He had become almost superstitious about the way he was always left with
no more than a hundred credits in his pockets. This time, he stripped
himself to that sum at once, depositing the rest in the First Marsport
Bank. Maybe it would break the jinx.
They were one of the few teams in the Seventh Precinct to make full
quota. Trench was lavish in his praise. He was playing more than fair
with Bruce Gordon now, but there was a basic suspicion in his eyes.
The next day, he drafted Izzy and Gordon for a trip outside the dome.
"It's easy enough, and you'll get plenty of credit in the fund for it. I
need two men who can keep their mouths shut."
They idled around the station through the morning. In the late
afternoon, they left in a big truck capable of hauling what would have
been fifty tons on Earth. Trench drove. Outside the dome, the electric
motor carried them along at a steady twenty miles an hour, almost
silently.
It was Gordon's first look at the real Mars. He saw small villages where
crop prospectors and hydroponic farmers lived, with a few small
industrial sections scattered over the desert. As they moved out, he saw
the slow change from the beaten appearance of Marsport to something that
seemed no worse than would be found among the share-croppers back on
Earth. It was obvious that Marsport was the poison center here.
Some of the younger children were running around without helmets,
confirming Praeger's claim that third-generation Martians somehow
learned to adapt to the atmosphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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