I could hear myself breathing in the silence. I was sick. I'd never been the kind of space tough one of those Martian Colonial Administrator's women would invite to a Double Moon tea, but just the same everyone doesn't like to kill.
My record wasn't too bad; brawls, drunks, a few killings in self defense. Born in the asteroids, father a prospector, me a prospector. At twenty-three, I'd hit a strike a month ago, and cushioned into the big port at Sanskran to unload, get more machinery and return to that meteorite where I'd hit "heavy" beryllium, paired-atom stuff worth twice its weight in platinum to the Atomician boys on Earth.
The breed girl, the cause of the trouble, cried, "He's dead!"
Nobody moved. Then the girl came at me; the few jewels, which was all she wore, flashed as red as her eyes and her clawing nails. "You killed him!" she screamed. I pushed in her face with my flat hand, and sent her sprawling beside the dead guy she was so nuts about.
The krin-krin went out of me. The place was hot and somebody said the cops were coming. There was no time for talking or thinking or feeling sorry; I measured my chances and ran for the door. I knocked two guys out of the way and went through the blue stone doors into the street. Up the red stone street like it was swimming in blood, a black jetcar was coming fast under the shine of the Deimos.
Cops. I'd never had any trouble with them before. Now it was just Ray Berton and the cops—and nothing in between but the cold Martian night. So I turned and ran the other way. A knot of men came out of the tavern and came at me. I stopped. Another jetcar curved into the street from the other end of the block. All right. I turned, backed into the side of the triangle of stone, stood waiting and my fists were hard. I'd never had any parents, not much. My mother died when I was born, and twelve years later, my dad died from over-exposure to above ten point cos-rays. It isn't anything to remember, seeing an old man die like that.
So I'd been a space bum, and ended up a drunken brawling killer in a North Canal scum sieve! All right, so maybe you could have done better. Come on and get it, you guys who think you could have done any better. Come on, come on....
And then it hit me. Thought. A big hot fist of it, punching into my head. A big exploding fire of thought—but not my own.
"Step over here into the shadows, Ray Berton."