"Worth a hundred thousand on Earth," I said. "How much am I bid?"
But nobody made me an offer. I might have known it. Some days you just can't turn an honest credit.
Joey's euphoric appeal should have had the traders scrambling for him, but I had underestimated his effect. They wanted him, sure, but the brotherly love he instilled in them made every buyer, Earth homo or Eetee, ashamed to jack up the price against his neighbor.
We compromised finally by listing Joey for proxy sale, and I took him out of Cargo Declarations to clear the air. He would be safe in the Annabelle's cabin because no one who got close enough to steal him would have the heart to do it, and I'd have time while the bids rolled in to sample a pitcher or two of yellow Martian skohl down at the Argonaut Club.
Joey was safe enough, but I wasn't. I hadn't walked more than forty yards from the Annabelle after putting Joey away when I bumped into Captain Giles of the spaceport police.
"Wait up," the Captain said. "I'll warn you this time before it happens, Bailey. If you start another riot at the Argonaut Club—"
Captain Giles was a rail-thin six-footer with a dour hatchet face burned to leather by Martian sun and wind, a hard-boiled but conscientious patrol officer who had missed his calling. He should have been a missionary, being as chaste as a Cosmicist monk and twice as stern.
I heard variations of his ultimatum every time I put down at Areopolis. But this time I had the answer to it.
"Will you step over to the Annabelle with me, Captain?" I asked. "I'd like your opinion on the cargo I brought in."
He went, glowering and suspicious. Sixty feet from the Annabelle we walked into Joey's euphoric aura, and his grumbling was shut off as if somebody had turned a spigot.