"Get some water," he said. He laid Tallant on a cot and began to wipe off his face. There was a scalp cut where Watts' boot had clipped him, most of the blood was coming from that; but it was high and it did not feel like a fracture. Presently Tallant groaned and shook his head and opened his eyes. The pupils did not look bad. "How do you feel?" McCullough asked. "Rough," Tallant mumbled. "Rough. Side ... hurts...." McCullough pulled up the shirt and looked. There was a swelling purplish bruise on the chest. He touched it gently and drew a gasp of pain. "Looks like maybe you got a cracked rib," he said. "Get me some tape, will you, Mary?" He took the roll of tape and wound it tightly about Tallant's chest. "That'll hold till you get to a doctor," he said. Tallant drew a light experimental breath. "Feels better," he said. "What the hell happened anyway?" McCullough told him. "That's bad," Tallant said. "That fool Watts could touch off a real riot, there's plenty more around here with no more brains than he has, and just spoiling for trouble. Somebody ought to get the marshal's office working on it before things get out of hand." He took the wet rag he had been holding to his head away and examined the cut with squeamish fingers. "Have to get this stitched up too, I guess, before it sets up hard. Look, could you back my truck out into the street? I don't feel up to driving, but if I get it in the street, it can take me in to the dispensary on auto, and I can call Administration from there." There were very few private vehicles in Port Knakvik, or indeed anywhere on Centaurus II; but Tallant, who was an electrician, had a company panel which he drove to and from the job. Though it was chemically powered--the new inductor station was the first nuclear installation on the planet--it had the same cybernetic controls as any Earthside vehicle. They worked fine on paved roads. On Knakvik streets, however-- "I don't know," McCullough said dubiously, "You think you can make it on auto? Suppose you get stalled?" Port Knakvik lay on a silty alluvial plain. In the downtown area, the streets were stabilized, but back along the river where the shanties of the construction workers sprawled, they were simply ruts punctuated at frequent intervals by chuckholes where churning wheels had ripped off the overburden, exposing the bottomless muck beneath. "I'd go with you," McCullough said, "except I kind of hate to leave Mary and the kids right now--I tell you, maybe I could find somebody else. You lay down for a minute, take it easy, I'll look around." Tallant seemed to have guessed right about the riot, there were people running by outside toward a commotion at the lower end of the street where the native shanties clustered. McCullough saw a man he knew from the job. "Hey, George," he called, "you got time to do a little favor?" He explained about Tallant.