"Your brogue smells, kid. But that's about the way it went."
"Somehow, I never thought he meant it, this way. Thought he had something else in mind. The way he always looked out the port when he played. At the stars."
"I know, I know," I snapped. "Can it, can it."
Loftus shut up, but I knew what he meant, had known it before he said it, because I'd felt that way about McGinty for a long time, myself. McGinty played accordion music because it was something a little better than the canned stuff we could get on our radios. He had tried for that science degree because he'd wanted to make himself a little better, if he could. He griped about how "slow" the scientists were, griped about the "misers" we had in our politics. Just as a reaction against a state of affairs that he thought might be made a little better. It had always seemed to me that in McGinty's simple philosophy, if you could just get started making things a little better here and there, pretty soon, a lot of things would be a lot better everywhere. Not second-rate.
I drummed my fingers on the communications panel, watching Loftus and waiting for either Knight or Haliburton to buzz me that things were set. I started to get up and that was when my video signal started its nervous blinking. In a single movement I had it switched on. It framed McGinty's big red face.
He was drunk, and his blue eyes were blazing the way they always blazed, drunk or sober.
"Y'been a'callin' me, Colonel? Well here I am! Lookin' fer these, I'll bet!" He waved a huge gauntleted paw in front of the screen. It clutched the thin plastisheen envelope that contained the microstats.
Loftus was out of his chair in an instant, crowding the video next to me and triggering a desk recorder into action at the same time.
"Look, you crazy fool," I bellowed. "I'm not going to ask you what or why, McGinty, not now. But we're coming out after you, and you'd better be turned around and headed back this way by the time we've started."
"Yi, yi, Colonel! Kolomar's a-burnin' is 'e? Ha!" McGinty's red beard bristled, and brick-red hair straggled down into snapping eyes. "He's a slow-poke like a-a-ll the rest of 'em! Only I've got me a deal, Kenny me b'y!"