"I might ask the same of you, sailor." The man had raven-black hair save where, from a widow's peak, one single swatch of pure white sprang startlingly to lie like a stream of ice between dark banks. "By what right do you intrude on a private party?"
Chip shook the man's hand from his wrist. His eyes parried with hot defiance the stranger's frigid calm.
"By the right of any man," he growled, "to see fair play! I saw—"
"A moment, sailor!" The man's voice was like a low note struck in warning. "Before you tell what you saw, you might like to know who I am. My name is Blaze Amborg."
"I don't give a portside blast," snarled Chip, "if your name is Lucifer himself. I saw—"
"You haven't been out here long, have you, sailor? Well—that's your misfortune, I fear. Torth!"
He inclined his head gently toward the giant Venusian. The big man rolled forward. His hamlike paws reached for Chip. But fast as he moved, Chip moved faster still; in the split of a second his hand had found his belt. The dull lights of the Cosmobar glinted sallowly on metal that prodded Amborg's middle.
"So that's the way it is, eh?" gritted Chip. "Your bullies do your fighting for you? Well, maybe you're right. I haven't been out here long. But where I come from, men do their own scrapping. Now—tell these scum of yours to keep their distance, or by the Seven Sacred Stars, I'll let ether through you!"
A man could not tell by studying Amborg's features if his lips were white with fear or what. But the ice in his eyes was deeper, more shadowy. And he said, "Back, Torth!"
"That's better!" approved Chip. "And now—come out of it, you!" The drunken man had finally slipped out of the picture. Blissfully unaware of what was going on about him, his head had slumped to the bar. He was asleep, lips loosely agape, breath coming in sodden grunts. Chip grasped the nape of his neck, shook him roughly. "Pull yourself together!" he commanded. "We're getting out of here!"