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"I understand, sir," replied Tom. "Move out," said Connel, "and spaceman's luck!" With a last quick glance at Astro who gave him a reassuring nod, Tom dropped to his knees and crawled out from behind their hidden position. Dropping flat on his stomach, he inched forward toward the administration building.
He dared not look away from that gathering to see how the fight at the other end of the camp was progressing. But he did see Tau's advance. The medic came into the light of the fire, not with his ordinary loose-limbed spaceman's stride, but mincingly, with a dancing step, and he was singing to the drum beat of "Terra Bound."
Grimly Kit Barnard looked up at the sky where the black ship had just vanished. "Spaceman's luck, Kit," said Sid, offering his hand. Kit grasped it quickly and jumped into his ship, closing the air lock behind him. As Sid climbed down from the ramp, the three cadets rushed up breathlessly, disappointed at being unable to give Kit their personal good wishes.
"In the secondhand shops along Spaceman's Row," replied the big Venusian. "We can get good equipment down there at half the price." The cab turned abruptly off the main highway and began twisting through a section of the city shunned by the average Venusian citizen. Spaceman's Row had a long and unsavory history. For ten square blocks it was the hide-out and refuge of the underworld of space.
The three cadets nodded. "All right," said Strong. "Spaceman's luck, and remember, you'll be wanted criminals when you walk out of that door. So act like criminals. Fight them the same way they will fight you. This is not a space maneuver. It's your lives against theirs!" Without another word, the three cadets slipped out of the room and disappeared down the corridor.
Here and there, nuaniam signs began to flick on, their garish blues, reds, and whites bathing the street in a glow of synthetic light. It was early evening, but already Spaceman's Row was getting ready for the coming night. Presently, Mason left Loring, climbing up a long narrow flight of stairs leading to a dingy back hall bedroom to pack their few remaining bits of gear.
He filled out numerous forms, signed affidavits, explained his unauthorized landing, showed his spaceman's ticket, defended his act of piloting without an up-to-date license, signed more forms, entered a claim for salvage rights to the Egg, and finally when the Legal Division, the Traffic Control Division, the Spaceport Safety Office, Customs, Immigration, and Travelers Aid had finished with him, he was ushered into the presence of the Port Captain.
And more important, you know I mean what I say!" Shinny got up. "Tomorrow, same time, same place," he said, hurrying out the door. Roger finished the bottle of Martian fizz, suddenly very depressed. He didn't really want the false papers. He just wanted to get away from the deadly humdrum existence on Spaceman's Row. He walked wearily back to his scrubby little bedroom to wait for night to come.
By watching his expenses he had enough money to live here for a month and if nothing came of his efforts to find a job on this planet, there was always his spaceman's ticket and another world. Another world! There were over six thousand planets in the Brotherhood of Man.
"Watch me now and wait for my whistle." He turned away and then paused to call back softly, "Spaceman's luck, Tom." "Same to you, Astro," replied Tom, and then crouched tensely in the shadows. The big cadet walked casually toward the sentry, who spotted him immediately and brought his gun up sharply, calling a challenge in the Venusian tongue. "A friend," replied Astro in the same dialect.
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