It isn't fair, he thought in the last dim moment of consciousness. It just isn't fair.
He woke up shivering, feeling as if a planet or two had fallen on him.
Those blueskins do a job when they beat a man up, he thought.
Stiffly he rolled over. The chilling winds of Mars came roaring down to bite at him. He was lying in the gutter outside the Space Service office, sprawled out with one hand lying casually along the sidewalk like any drunk's. He was numb all over. Numb and cold.
Slowly he began to remember why he was down here in the gutter, and anger began to warm him. He was washed-up. Through. At twenty-seven his career as a spacepilot was over, and he had been booted out of the Space Service office without ceremony.
Worse than that—he was stuck here on Mars with about ten dollars in his pocket. It would cost eight thousand to get back home. Eight thousand—and Kathy with a baby coming, and him with no job now. It was enough to make a man kill himself.
He started to pull himself wearily to his feet, but his aching muscles wouldn't support him and he sagged into a limp heap on the side of the curb. His head dropped into his hands. A couple of tearless sobs shook him.
A man ought to be better prepared for things like this, he told himself. One minute a top-flight spaceman; then a machine gives you a few tests and you're nothing but a bum sobbing in the gutter.
A hand touched his shoulder. Instinctively he shrank away. He was in no shape for further fighting.