"Sure I would. But I'm bound to the wheel. Cripes, though—watch yourself, fella. Don't you get into a mess!"
"Hell—you're the mess specialist, Frank. Fanshaw isn't here for fun. And there's been that new trouble at home..."
A Tovie bubb, loaded with people, and a Stateside bubb, both in orbit around the Earth, had collided. No survivors. But there was plenty of blaming and counter-blaming. Another dangerous incident. Glory—with all the massed destructive power there was, could luck really last forever?
Frank Nelsen got back to Post One, okay. But later, riding in to Post Three, just in an Archer Six, with a couple of guards [p. 113] for company, he picked up a long-lost voice, falsely sweet, then savage at the end:
"I'm a Jinx, aren't I, Frankie? A vulture. Nice and cavalier, you are. I bet you hoped I was dead. Okay—Sucker...!"
Tiflin didn't even answer when Nelsen tried to beam him.
Nelsen was able to save Post Three. The guards and most of the personnel were experienced and tough. They drove the Jolly Lads back and deflected some chunks of aimed and accelerated asteroid chips, with new defense rockets.
Joe Kuzak, at Post Seven, wasn't so lucky, though Frank had tipped him off. Half of the post was scattered and pirated. Six fellas and the wife of one of them—a Bunch from Baltimore—were just drying shreds that drifted in the wreckage. Big Joe, though he had a rocket chip through his chest, had been able to beat off the attackers, with the help of a few asteroid-hoppers and his novice crew which turned out to be more rugged than some people might have expected.
Frank got to them just as it was over—except for the cursing, the masculine tears of grief and rage, the promises of revenge. Luckily, none of the women had been captured.
Joe Kuzak, full of new antibiotics and coagulants, was still up and around. "So we knocked off a few of them, Frank," he said ruefully in his office bubb. "Several were in Tovie armor. Runaways, or agents? They're crowding us, boy. Hell, what a junk heap this post is going to be, to sort out..."