Evans Endures It
Evans was impressed. "I'll keep a close watch for him going back, sir," he promised.
The Commander's warning rang in Evans' ears all the week that followed, and he was forced during that week to admit that his superior's view of the situation was correct. The Earth-Guard was suffering a distinct loss of prestige. It seemed to Evans that wherever he went his blue Earth-Guard uniform, once an envied garb, was greeted with titters and derisive comments that made his ears burn.
The newspapers and teletheaters were exploiting the situation to the utmost. If Evans watched a troupe of dancers he was met with the spectacle of a nimble black-garbed figure, representing the Hawk, eluding with ease the slowly-moving blue-garbed figures symbolic of the Earth-Guard. If he was introduced to anyone by a joking friend it was always with a jesting reference to his imminent capture of the Hawk. Small boys called after him that the Hawk was coming, and then delightedly ran away.
The Hawk, indeed, was coming to have far more of the public sympathy than the Earth-Guard. It was true that he held up defenseless passenger-craft between earth and moon, forcing them under the menace of his guns to cast loose for him in their life-rockets whatever of value they carried. All knew that he was an outlaw of the void, and would meet swift death at the hands of a firing-squad were he captured.
But if he was a space-pirate, he was not one like the earlier space-buccaneers whose atrocities had roused a fury that had swept them out of existence. He was, if anything, a gentleman-corsair of the void, and though few had ever looked on his face, it was rumored that he was exceptionally handsome. It was small wonder that by the end of his week of relief Evans' nerves were ragged and he was longing for the peacefulness of the space patrol.
When on the last day of their relief he found Calden and Hartley at the New York station, inspecting the great Earth-Guard rocket, preparatory to its start back out into space, he found their nerves as raw on the subject as his own. They too had felt the whips of the public laughter.
"You know," growled Hartley as he ran a practised eye over the looming rocket's stern firing-tubes, "I'm just about praying that we meet up with the Hawk this trip. I'm not thin-skinned—but when my little daughter begins to ask daddy why he doesn't catch the Hawk, I'm getting to the busting point!"