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Updated: September 10, 2025
But Rat was quizzical about the whole enterprise when Alan returned to his room to get him. "You aren't serious, Alan. You really are going over to the Earther city?" Alan nodded and gestured for the little extra-terrestrial to take his usual perch. "Are you daring to take my word in vain, Rat?" he asked in mock histrionics. "When I say I'm going to do something, I do it."
The place was dimly lit, as all Earther pleasure-places seemed to be. Alan saw a double row of tables spreading to the back of the parlor. At each table was an earnest-looking citizen hunched over a board, watching the pattern of lights in front of him come and go, change and shift. Another robot glided up to them. "May I see your card, please?" It purred.
See me come back, beaten up and ragged, a washed-out old man at twenty-six? No, sir. The Captain blotted me out of his mind a long time ago, and he and I don't have any further business together." "You're wrong, Steve. He sent me into the Earther city deliberately to find you. He said to me, 'Find Steve and urge him to come back to the ship. He's forgiven you completely," Alan lied.
The Starmen's Enclave seemed utterly quiet, almost dead. Then he turned and kept his gaze forward. The Earther city was waiting for him. He reached the end of the walkway and paused, a little stunned, staring at the incredible immensity of the city spread out before him. "It's a big place," he said. "I've never been in a city this big." "You were born here," Rat reminded him. Alan laughed.
The first thing Alan saw was the majestic floating curve of the bridge. Then he saw the Earther city, a towering pile of metal and masonry that seemed to be leaping up into the sky ahead of them, completely filling the view. Alan pointed to the bridge-mouth. "That's where we go across, isn't it?" But Quantrell hung back.
Hawkes had seen to it that they stayed away from the apartment during the first few months of Alan's Earther education; but now that the ex-starman was an accomplished gambler and fairly well skilled in self-defense, all of Hawkes' old friends were returning once again. Day by day Alan increasingly realized how innocent and childlike a starman's life was.
He looked then at Quantrell. "You said you've been wanting to break loose. You want to get out of the Enclave, eh, Kevin?" "Yes," Quantrell said slowly. Alan felt excitement beginning to pound hard in the pit of his stomach. "How'd you like to go outside there with me? See the Earther city?" "You mean jump ship?" The naked words, put just that bluntly, stung.
"That's an old proverb of that planet out there. The main vault of the computer files says you were born in 3576, unless I forget. And if you ask any Earther what year this is he'll tell you it's 3876. 3576-3876 that's three hundred years, no?" His eyes twinkled. "Stop playing games with me, Dad." Alan held forth his Tally. "It doesn't matter what the computer files say.
We'd be able to come home from space and take a normal part in Earth's life, instead of pulling away and segregating ourselves here." Alan looked up at the seemingly unreachable towers of the Earther city just across the river from the Enclave. Somewhere out there was Steve.
Sick from boredom." He and Roger sat down carefully on the edge of a crumbling stone bench. They said nothing, just looking around. After a long while Alan broke the uncomfortable silence. "You know what this place is? It's a ghetto. A self-imposed ghetto. Starmen are scared silly of going out into the Earther cities, so they keep themselves penned up in this filthy place instead."
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