"So I get sent to Mercury?"
"You can't stay here. They'll find out too much eventually." He paused, estimating Gordon. "You can go back to Earth, Bruce, but you won't like it now. You're a fighter. And there's hell brewing on Mercury—worse than here. We've got permission to send you there, if you'll go. With a yellow ticket, again—but without any razzle-dazzle this time. The only thing you'll get out of it is a chance to fight for a better chance for others some day—and a promise that there'll be more, until you get old enough to sit at a desk on Earth and fight against every bickering nation there to keep the planets clean. There's a rocket waiting to transship you to the Moon on the way to Mercury right now."
Gordon sighed. "All right. But I wish you'd tell my wife sometime that—well, that I didn't just run out on her. She's had bad luck with men."
"She already knows," the Security man said. "I've been waiting for you quite a while, you know. And I've paid her the pay we owe you from the time you began using your badge. She's out shopping!"
The car pulled up to the waiting rocket, and the Security man helped him up the steps with a perfunctory wish for good luck. Then Bruce Gordon stopped as great arms surrounded him.
Mother Corey was immaculate, though not much prettier. But his old eyes were glinting. "Did you think we'd let you go without seeing you off, cobber?" he asked. "And after I took a bath to celebrate? I—I—Oh, drat it, I'm getting old. Izzy, you tell him."
He grabbed Gordon's hand and waddled down the landing plank. Izzy shook his head.
"I can't say it, either, gov'nor—but some day, I'm going to have one of those badges myself. Like I always said, honesty sure pays, even if it kills you. Here!"
He followed Mother Corey, leaving behind his favorite knife and a brand-new deck of reader cards, marked exactly as the ones Gordon had first used.
Gordon dropped into his seat, while the sounds outside indicated take-off time. He had less than a hundred credits, a knife, a deck of phony cards, and a yellow ticket. Mars was leaving him what he'd brought....