CHAPTER 10
"Can I speak with you a minute, spaceman?"
Roger turned from the automatic food dispenser and stared at a wizened little man standing beside him, grinning up at him toothlessly.
"What do you want?" asked Roger.
"Just talk. Let's sit down at this table, eh?" said the little man, taking the cadet by the arm. "Gotta little deal I think you might be interested in."
Roger cast a quick appraising glance over the shabbily dressed man and walked to the table. Unless someone knew Roger personally, it would have been hard to recognize him. No longer wearing the vivid blue of the senior Space Cadet, he was now dressed in black trousers fitting snugly around the legs, a midnight blue pull-over jersey, and the black-billed hat of the merchant spaceman. His once close-cropped blond hair was beginning to grow shaggy around the edges, and with the hat pulled low over his forehead, he might have been another person entirely.
Leaving the space station on the jet liner had been easy for Roger, since no one suspected he would violate his trust. But once his absence was discovered and the warrant issued for his arrest, it had been necessary for him to assume some sort of disguise to elude the Solar Guard MP's. Roger had wound up on Spaceman's Row in Venusport as a matter of course. Luckily, when he left the station, he had the foresight to take all of his money with him, so he was not yet in need.
On Spaceman's Row, Roger found the new freedom from discipline enjoyable at first, but now the novelty had worn off. Having visited all of the interesting places on the Row, existence there had become boring. His one attempt to leave Spaceman's Row had nearly met with disaster. Running into a squad of Solar Guard MP's, he had made a hurried escape into a near-by jet taxi. Back on the Row, Roger had lounged around the cafés, feeling the loneliness that haunts men wanted by the law. And only because he was so lonely he had agreed to talk to the little man who sat and stared at him from across the table.
"You a rocket pusher, astrogator, or skipper?" asked the little man.
"Who wants to know?" asked Roger cautiously.