He advanced on Meek and Meek backed against the wall.
Jensen lifted his fist, held it in front of him as if he were weighing it.
“I ought to bop you one,” he decided. “All of us had ought to bop you one. Every danged man in this here room has got his shirt bet on the game because we figured we couldn’t lose with a coach like you.”
“So have I,” said Meek. But it wasn’t until he said it that he really realized he did have his shirt bet on Twenty-three. His spaceship. It wasn’t all he had, of course, but it was the thing that was nearest to his heart… the thing he had slaved for thirty years to buy.
He suddenly remembered those years now. Years of bending over account books in the dingy office back on Earth, watching other men go out in space, longing to go himself. Counting pennies so that he could go. Spending only a dime for lunch and eating crackers and cheese instead of going out for dinner in the evening. Piling up the dollars, slowly through the years… dollars to buy the ship that now stood out on the field, all damage repaired. Sitting, poised for space.
But if Thirty-seven won it wouldn’t be his any longer. It would be Craney’s. He’d just made a bet with Craney and there were plenty of witnesses to back it up.
“Well?” demanded Jensen.
“I will play,” said Meek.
“And you really know about the game? You wasn’t kidding us?”
Meek looked at the men before him and the expression on their faces shaped his answer.
He gulped… gulped again. Then slowly nodded.
“Sure, I know about it,” he lied.
They didn’t look quite satisfied.
He glanced around, but there was no way of escape. He faced them again, back pressed against the wall.
He tried to make his voice light and breezy, but he couldn’t quite keep out the croak.
“Haven’t played it much in the last few years,” he said, “but back when I was a kid I was a ten-goal man.”
They were satisfied at that.
V
HUNCHED behind the controls, Meek slowly circled Gus’ crate, waiting for the signal, half fearful of what would happen when it came.
Glancing to left and right, he could see the other ships of Sector Twenty-three, slowly circling too, red identification lights strung along their hulls.
Ten miles away a gigantic glowing ball danced in the middle of the space-field, bobbing around like a jigging lantern. And beyond it were the circling blue lights of the Thirty-seven team. And beyond them the glowing green space-buoys that marked the Thirty-seven goal line.
Meek bent an attentive ear to the ticking of the motor, listening intently for the alien click he had detected a moment before. Gus’ ship, to tell the truth, was none too good. It might have been a good ship once, but now it was worn out. It was sluggish and slow to respond to the controls, it had a dozen little tricks that kept one on the jump. It had followed space trails too long, had plumped down to too many bumpy landings in the maelstrom of the Belt.
Meek sighed gustily. It would have been different if they had let him take his own ship, but it was only on the condition that he use Gus’ ship that Thirty-seven had agreed to let him play at all. They had raised a fuss about it, but Twenty-three had the law squarely on its side.
He stole a glance toward the sidelines and saw hundreds of slowly cruising ships. Ships crammed with spectators out to watch the game. Radio ships that would beam a play by play description to be channeled to every radio station throughout the Solar system. Newsreel ships that would film the clash of opposing craft. Ships filled with newsmen who would transmit reams of copy back to Earth and Mars.
Looking at them, Meek shuddered.
How in the world had he ever let himself get into a thing like this? He was out to see the solar system, not to play a polo game… especially a polo game he didn’t want to play.
It had been the bugs, of course. If it hadn’t been for the bugs, Gus never would have had the chance to talk him into that coaching business.
He should have spoken out, of course. Told them, flat out, that he didn’t know a thing about polo. Made them understand he wasn’t going to have a thing to do with this silly scheme. But they had shouted at him and laughed at him and bullied him. Been nice to him, too. That was the biggest trouble. He was a sucker, he knew, for anyone who was nice to him. Not many people had been.
Maybe he should have gone to Miss Henrietta Perkins and explained. She might have listened and understood. Although he wasn’t any too sure about that. She probably had plenty to do with starting the publicity rolling. After all, it was her job to make a showing on the jobs she did.
If it hadn’t been for Gus dusting off the place on the mantelpiece. If it hadn’t been for the Titan City Junior Chamber of Commerce. If it hadn’t been for all the ballyhoo about the mystery coach.
But more especially, if he’d kept his fool mouth shut and not made that bet with Craney.
MEEK groaned and tried to remember the few things he did know about polo. And he couldn’t think of a single thing, not even some of the things he had made up and told the boys.
Suddenly a rocket flared from the referee’s ship and with a jerk Meek hauled back the throttle. The ship gurgled and stuttered and for a moment, heart in his throat, Meek thought it was going to blow up right then and there.
But it didn’t. It gathered itself together and leaped, forcing Meek hard against the chair, snapping back his head. Dazed, he reached out for the repulsor trigger.
Ahead the glowing ball bounced and quivered, jumped this way and that as the ships spun in a mad melee with repulsor beams whipping out like stabbing knives.
Two of the ships crashed and fell apart like matchboxes. A third, trying a sharp turn above the field of play, came unstuck and strewed itself across fifty miles of space.
Substitute ships dashed in from the sidelines, signalled by the referee’s blinking light. Rescue ships streaked out to pick up the players, salvage ships to clear away the pieces.
For a fleeting moment, Meek got the bobbing sphere in the cross-hairs and squeezed the trigger. The ball jumped as if someone had smacked it with his fist, sailed across the field.
Fighting to bring the ship around, Meek yelled in fury at its slowness. Desperately pouring on the juice, he watched with agony as a blue-lighted ship streamed down across the void, heading for the ball.
The ship groaned in every joint, protesting and twisting as if in agony, as Meek forced it around. Suddenly there was a snap and the sudden swoosh of escaping air. Startled, Meek looked up. Bare ribs stood out against star-spangled space. A plate had been ripped off!
Face strained behind the visor of his spacesuit, hunched over the controls, he waited for the rest of the plates to go. By some miracle they hung on. One worked loose and flapped weirdly as the ship shivered in the turn.
But the turn had taken too long and Meek was too late. The blue-lamped ship already had the ball, was streaking for the goal line. Jensen somehow had had sense enough to refuse to be sucked out goalie position, and now he charged in to intercept.
But he muffed his chance. He dived in too fast and missed with his repulsor beam by a mile at least. The ball sailed over the lighted buoys and the first chukker was over with Thirty-seven leading by one score.
The ships lined up again.
The rocket flared from the starter’s ship and the ships plunged out. One of Thirty-seven’s ships began to lose things. Plates broke loose and fell away, a rocket snapped its moorings and sailed off at a tangent, spouting gouts of flame, the structural ribs came off and strewed themselves along like spilling toothpicks.
Battered by repulsor beams, the ball suddenly bounced upward and Meek, trailing the field, waiting for just such a chance, played a savage tune on the tube controls.