“But I…”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” declared Gus. “You’re just pretending you don’t know anything about polo, that’s all. Maybe you’re a fugitive from justice. Maybe that’s why you’re so anxious to make a getaway. Only reason you stopped at all was because your ship got stoved up.”
“I’m no fugitive,” declared Meek, drawing himself up. “I’m just a bookkeeper out to see the system.”
“Forget it,” said Gus. “Forget it. Nobody around here’s going to give you away. If they even so much as peep, I’ll plain paralyze them. So you’re a bookkeeper. That’s good enough for me. Just let anyone say you ain’t a bookkeeper and see what happens to him.”
Meek opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. What was the use? Here he was, stuck again. Just like back on Juno when that preacher had thought he was a gunman and talked him into taking over the job of cleaning up the town. Only this time it was a space polo game and he knew even less about space polo than he did about being a lawman.
Gus rose and limped slowly across the room. Ponderously, he hauled a red bandanna out of his back pocket and carefully dusted off the one uncrowded space on the mantel shelf, between the alarm clock and the tarnished silver model of a rocket ship.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “she’ll look right pretty there.”
He backed away and stared at the place on the shelf.
“I can almost see her now,” he said. “Glinting in the lamplight. Something to keep me company. Something to look at when I get lonesome.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Meek.