He enjoyed the trip. I'm going back home, he thought as he paced along the gleaming arc of the bridge, dressed in his Sunday best. He remembered the days of his own childhood, his parentless childhood. His earliest memory was of a fight at the age of six or so. He had stood off what seemed like half the neighborhood, ending the battle by picking up an older bully, much feared by everyone, and heaving him over a fence. When he told his grandmother about the way he had won the fight she cried for an hour, and never told him why. But they had never picked on him again, though he knew the other boys had jeered at him behind his back as he grew bigger and bigger over the years. "Ape," they called him. "Ape."
But never to his face.
He approached the Yawk end of the bridge. A guard was waiting there—an Earther guard, small and frail, but with a sturdy-looking blaster at his hip.
"Going back, Spacer?"
Rolf started. How did the guard know? And then he realized that all the guard meant was, are you going back to your ship?
"No. No, I'm going to a party. Kal Quinton's house."
"Tell me another, Spacer." The guard's voice was light and derisive. A swift poke in the ribs would break him in half, Rolf thought.
"I'm serious. Quinton invited me. Here's his card."
"If this is a joke it'll mean trouble. But go ahead; I'll take your word for it."
Rolf marched on past the guard, almost nonchalantly. He looked at the address on the card. 12406 Kenman Road. He rooted around in his fading memory of Yawk, but he found the details had blurred under the impact of five years of Mars and Venus and the Belt and Neptune. He did not know where Kenman Road was.