Astounding British Edition, Volume 8, No. 11 — page 36: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 ‘pointed jaw. Evidently some of her relatives had died in the disaster and she held him personally responsible. He had destroyed the help that was on its way to casualties. “How does it feel?” she demanded, her voice going higher, and her hands clenching into weapons, “Would you step aside please, Miss?” A quick hand slashed out to rake his cheek with sharp nails. Pain seared his face. He did not move. Two bright stripes of blood appeared from his eye to the corner of his mouth. A drop trickled to the point of his chin and splattered down upon the girl’s shoe. “On my planet,” he said, in a not unkindly tone, “when a woman insists on behaving like an animal, we assist her—by having her flogged naked in the public square. I see personal dignity is not so highly prized here. You do not regard it as a crime to behave like an alley cat?” Her breath gushed out of her in a sound of rage, and she tore at the wounds again. Then, when he did nothing but look at her coldly, she fled. Eli Roki, born to the nobility of Coph, dedicated to the service of the Sixty-Star Cluster, suddenly found himself something of an outcast. As he strode down the cor- ridor away from Beth’s office, he seemed to be walking into a thickening fog of desolation. He had no home now; for he had abdicated his hereditary rights on Coph in order to accept a commission with the SSC Patrol. That, too, was gone; and with it, his career. He had known from the moment he pressed the firing stud to blast the mercy freighter that unless the freighter proved to be a smuggler, his career would be forfeit. He was still morally certain that he had made no mistake. Had the freighter been carrying any other cargo, he would have been disciplined for not blasting it. And, if they had had nothing to hide, they would have stopped for inspection. Somewhere among Sol’s planets lay the answer to the -Question—‘What else was aboard besides the cargo of mercy?” Roki shivered and stiffened his shoulders as he rode homeward in a heliocab. If the answer to the question were “nothing,” then according to the code of his planet, there was only one course left to follow. “The Sword of Apology” it was called. He waited in his quarters for the colonel to fulfill his promise. On the following day, Beth called, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION “I’ve found a Dalethian ship, Roki. Privately owned. Pilot’s willing to fly you out of the Cluster. It’s going as an observa- tion mission—gather data on the Sol Sys- tem. The commissioners vetoed the idea of sending a diplomatic delegation until we try to contact Solarians by high-C radio.” “When do I leave?” “Be at the spaceport tonight. And good luck, son. I’m sorry all this happened, and I hope—” “Yeah, thanks.” “Well—” “Well?” The colonel grunted and hung up. Ex- Commander Roki gathered up his uniforms and went looking for a pawn shop. “Hock "em, or sell °em?” asked a bald man behind the counter. Then he peered more closely at Roki’s face, and paused to glance at a picture on the front page of the paper. “Oh,” he grunted; “you. You wanta sell “em.” With a slight sneer, he pulled two bills from his pocket and slapped them on the counter with a contemptuous take-it-or- leave-it stare. The clothing was worth at least twice as much. Roki took it after a moment’s hesitation. The money just matched the price tag on a sleek, snub- nosed Multin automatic that lay in the display case. “And three hundred rounds of ammuni- on,” he said quietly as he pocketed the weapon. The dealer sniffed. “It only takes one shot, bud—for what you need to do.” Roki thanked him for the advice and took his three hundred rounds. He arrived at the spaceport before his pilot and went to inspect the small Dale- thian freighter that would bear him to the rim of the galaxy. His face clouded as he saw the pitted hull and the glaze of fusion around the lips of the jet tubes. Some of the ground personnel had left a Geiger hanging on the stern, to warn wanderers to keep away. Its dial indicator was fluttering in the red. He carried it into the ship. The needle dropped to a safe reading in the con- trol cabin, but there were dangerous spots in the reactor room. Angrily he went to look over the controls. His irritation grew. The ship—aptly named the Jdiot—was of ancient vintage, without the standard warning systems or safety devices, and with no armament other than its ion guns. The fifth dial of its posi- tion indicator was calibrated only to one hundred thousand C’s,.and was red-lined CONC OOOKS. CO