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"This place is really old. I wonder how far back those run-down buildings date." "Thousand years, maybe more. No one ever bothers to build new ones. What for? The starmen don't mind living in the old ones." "I almost wish the medical clearance hadn't come through after all," said Roger moodily. "How so?" "Then we'd be still quarantined up there.
I just sit here and wait." Alan glanced down the quiet sun-warmed street. Here and there a couple of venerable-looking starmen were sitting, swapping stories of their youth a youth that had been a thousand years before. The Enclave, Alan thought, is a place for old men. They walked on for a while until the buzzing neon signs of a feelie theater were visible. "I'm going in," Roger said.
Alan continued to revolve the incident in his mind. He realized he had a lot to learn about people, particularly Earther people. He could handle himself pretty well aboard ship, but down on Earth he was a rank greenhorn and he'd have to step carefully. He looked gloomily at the maze of streets before him and half-wished he had stayed in the Enclave, where starmen belonged.
We'd better take you down for questioning. You starmen come in here and try to " "Just a minute, officer." The warm mellow voice belonged to the smiling man on the bench. "This boy doesn't mean any trouble. I can vouch for him myself." "And who are you? Let's see your card!" Still smiling, the man reached into a pocket and drew forth his wallet.
Alan wondered how many other starmen had occupied the room before and after Bill Dansert. He wondered whether perhaps Bill Dansert himself were still alive somewhere between the stars, twelve centuries after he had left his name in the wall. He dropped himself into the pneumochair, feeling the soggy squish of the deflated cushion, and loosened the jacket of his uniform.
"Looks okay to me. But you might get that cavity in your upper right wisdom tooth taken care of. Otherwise you seem in good shape." He rolled up the tape. "Don't you starmen ever get time for a fluorine treatment? Some of you have the worst teeth I've ever seen." "We haven't had a chance for fluorination yet.
He stalked angrily away, inwardly raging at this Earther city where things like this could happen. "Don't ever let me catch you around here again!" the parlor man shouted after him. Alan lost himself once again in the crowd, but not before he caught the final words: "You filthy spacer!" Filthy spacer. Alan winced. Again the blind, unreasoning hatred of the unhappy starmen.
It wasn't often he had a chance to talk with someone his own age from another ship. "You know," he said, "we starmen lead an empty life. You don't get to realize it until you come to the Enclave." "I decided that a long time ago," Quantrell said. Alan spread his hands. "What do we do? We dash back and forth through space, and we huddle here in the Enclave.
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."
The rule was intended to apply to starmen who distrusted their captains and were fearful of being shipped off to some impossibly distant point; it said nothing at all about starmen who had been left behind and were planning to overtake their ships. But nothing prohibited Alan from getting the coordinates, and so they gave them to him. The Cavour was ready for the departure.
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