"You going right out?" Old Tom stopped his eternal polishing of glasses and gave his bald head a rub with the towel before switching on the hot plate. "I was hoping you could lay over a day and chew the fat."
"Not this time." Sage swished the coffee in its heavy cup to cool it. "I'm pushing off soon as they refuel my crate and calibrate the orbit; I've got troubles."
"Um!" The bartender squinted quizzically at his lean and lanky customer. "I hear the Big Shots are big-shotting it again on Venus."
"Right! They're getting much too big for their britches these days; that's why I'm on this cursed jaunt."
"I sort of thought you and the Space Patrol and my gal Sadie had the Big Shots on the hip up there."
"Sadie!" The captain's voice was bitter as his coffee.
"You kids been fighting again?"
"Fighting again! We never stop. If Sadie weren't your daughter, Tom, and if I weren't so crazy about her...." Frank's dour face lit up briefly, "... I'd have sewed her in a sack and dumped her into the Central Sea long ago."
"When she was a kid I often used to think of doing the same thing." Tom juggled a sizzling order onto a plate and slid it across the bar. "What's the trouble this time?"
"It's just that United Stars won't use the Patrol to clean the Big Shots off Venus." The younger man attacked the victuals with a gusto which belied his mood. "We've got things pretty well under control at Venusport. The Incor Underground is growing stronger all over Wildoatia. One more push and...."