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The years had taught him a certain insight into his own personality and he realized that his greedy little subconscious had collected all the cues and signals from the encounter at the spaceport and goaded him into a line of action that looked uncomfortably like suicide. The arrival of the stranger, the threat to himself, the automatic assumption by the Pyrrans that they would take care of him.
In spite of the apparent deadliness of the encounters all of the Pyrrans seemed to understand that, despite past hatreds, they were all really on the same side. A distant rumble from the clouded sky broke through his thoughts. "There is a ship on the radar," Meta said, coming out of the ground-control office and squinting up at the overcast.
For a cop you seem to be very tender hearted." "I did it only to save your friends. I did not want them to get hurt." "Get hurt!" Jason roared with laughter. "Space-cop, don't you have any idea what Pyrrans are like, or what kind of a setup you were walking into? Don't you realize that I saved your life though I really don't know why. Call me a natural humanitarian.
Then the spacer turned for a moment, in a landing correction, and he had a quick glimpse of a serial number and tantalizingly familiar insignia on its stern where had he seen that before? The ship touched down and the flaring rockets died. There was only the click of cooling metal from the ship: no one emerged, nor did any of the Pyrrans seem interested enough in the newcomer to approach it.
So far there had been very little traffic between the city Pyrrans and those living outside the walls, and what contact there had been usually led to the kind of violence he had just witnessed. The only minor note of hope in this concert of discord was the fact that no one had died as yet in any of these fearsome hand-to-hand conflicts.
Both Pyrrans had their guns ready and closed in with the merciless precision of trained predators. "Tell them to stop," the suit speaker grated at Jason. "I'll shoot you if they try anything." "Hold it!" Jason shouted, and the running Pyrrans stopped instantly. "Don't come any closer and whatever you do don't shoot."
Start walking backwards now I'll stay right behind you." "Look," Jason said calmly, not permitting himself to get angry. "Those are Pyrrans out there. Either of them could kill you so quickly that you couldn't possibly have time to pull that trigger.
He could take care of himself: he felt the anger rising again at the remembered words. Was that the only reason he had let this cop capture him? To show the Pyrrans that he was able to control his own destiny? Was the human ego such a pitiable thing that it had to keep reassuring itself of its own independence or lie down on its back and curl up its toes? Apparently it was. At least his was.
"The absence of weapons doesn't appear to make much difference when two Pyrrans start fighting. It seems impossible that this damage could be administered bare-handed." "Well it was. Even you should know that much about Pyrrus by now. We take our fighting very seriously. But they never think how much more work it makes for me.
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