He bit. While Pat and I sat there, Pat nervously shifting her glance from him to me, and me not daring to look at her because of the things I'd say to myself, he told his story. The orderlies brought our dinner, putting dishes down and taking them away as he talked between mouthfuls.
"They don't talk much about me, I guess," he began. "It's a pretty ordinary story, anyway. I was in the war, with my own squadron. We ran into some bad luck, combined with a set of orders that got mixed up. I lost my men. I lost a leg, too."
He leaned down and slapped his right thigh. It rang with metal. "I didn't enjoy that. While I was in the hospital, they brought charges against me. I wasn't given time to prepare an adequate defense, and they threw several paragraphs of the book at me. I was dropped a rank in grade, and slated for duty at a procurement office. I got my break, then. The Marties, under Kull, hit the Moon at practically that time."
I remembered that. They'd gotten a toehold and established a forward base, and Earth had started getting hit with atomic missiles.
"All of a sudden, anybody who could walk or be carried into a ship was tossed into a raggle-taggle fleet the TSN dredged up. That included me."
He grinned, "Only they made two mistakes. The first one was in thinking I still owed Earth any kind of a debt. The second was the bigger one—they gave me a crew raked out of every brig and detention barracks in the fleet. I guess they didn't think I was fit to command anything else."
He grinned. "Pat was in a Wasp unit attached to the base. I took her along."
He waved his hand at the men in the mess hall. "Some of my original crew are still with me. I simply headed for the Belt, and sat out the war. The boys didn't mind one bit. We had plenty of stores, and they knew nobody would bother us while there were more important things going on. Afterwards—well, we've done all right."
He had. Some of the freight lines bribed him. Some didn't.