The two patrolies looked in through the swinging doors up front when Perry and I were halfway to the service corridor. Their sunburned faces lighted up when they saw me, and they shoved the doors wider to command the room with their bell-mouthed freeze guns. Behind them on the street stood their tandem air-scooter, lights on and motor purring.
"You're under arrest, Bailey," one of them called. He was a corporal, and it was written all over him that he saw a sergeant's rating coming for this night's work. "Come out of that!"
I got a firmer grip on Perry's collar.
"Come and get me," I called back, knowing what would happen if they did.
They came in on the double with their freeze guns ready—and halted, looking sheepish, when the smiley's aura got to them.
"Aw, forget it," the corporal said. "You're a good guy, Bailey. Go ahead. Go anywhere you like."
"Sure," the other seconded. "Take our air-scooter if you want. Need any extra credits where you're going?"
I headed for the service with Perry again but we had waited too long. One of Shanig's uglies was standing in the doorway with a foolish grin on his face, and I knew there would be others waiting in the alley outside. And those others wouldn't be under Joey's influence.
So I cut for the front entrance instead, dragging Perry like a bag of old laundry. The patrolies' air-scooter stood purring at the curb. I draped Perry across it and jumped for the operator's seat, expecting to be beamed down any second. I'd have made it, too, but for Perry.
Perry had taken on a monumental load of skohl during the day, and the instant he was out of Joey's influence the inflated little ego of him demanded to be heard. He scrambled off the air-scooter, swelled out his size thirty-two chest and launched into an old rocketroom ballad—a smutty saga listing the personal iniquities of the Captain Crow who led the first Mars flight just before the turn of the century.