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The nervous, explosive-tempered kid, who couldn't have survived out here, had been burned out of him. For a second, Nelsen almost thought that the change could be for the good. But it was naive to hope that that could happen. Glen Tiflin had become passive, yielding, mocking, with an air of secret knowledge withheld. What did an attitude like that suggest?
Treachery, or, perhaps worse, a kind of poised and poisonous mental judo? Nelsen looked at the other man, who wore a Tovie armor. Tall, starvation-lean. Horse-faced, with a lugubrious, bumpkinish smile that almost had a whimsical appeal. "Honest I just picked up Igor which ain't his real name in the course of my travels," Tiflin offered lightly. "He used to be a comic back in Eurasia.
He burped delicately, patted his chest plate, then sniffed in sad protest at the leveled pistols. Now Nelsen and Ramos cast off the loaded nets they had been towing, and closed in on this strange pair. Nelsen did the searching, while Ramos pointed the guns. "Haven't even got my shiv anymore, Frankie," Tiflin remarked, casually. "Threw it at a guy named Fessler, once. Missed by an inch.
Ramos' eyes had a battlelight. "All right, Tiflin approach. These guns are lined up and loaded." "Aw is that friendship, Mex?" the renegade seemed to wheedle. But insolently, he and his larger companion came on. "Toss us your pistols," Ramos commanded, as they drifted close, checking speed. Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were missing.
"So has it happened?" Nelsen growled into his phone. "It has," came the mocking answer. "Be cavalier, Nelsen. Salute the new top outlaw... Don't faint I knew I'd make it... And don't try anything you might regret... I'm coming in with a couple of my Jolly Lads. You'd better not welsh on your promises. Because the others are armed and waiting..." The guys with Tiflin looked more tired than tough.
In a joint he watched a girl with almost no clothes, do an incredible number of spinning somersaults in mid-air. He thought he ought to find himself a friend then decided perversely, to hell with it. He thought of the trouble on Earth, of Ceres, of Tiflin and Igor, of Fanshaw, the latest leader of the Asteroid Belt toughs the Jolly Lads that you heard about.
Ramos, the night-mechanic, Tiflin, the car-washer, and Two-and-Two Baines, the part-time bricklayer, didn't have it so easy. Eileen, a first-rate legal typist employed for several hours a day by a partnership of lawyers, could usually work from notes, at the place where she lived. Two-and-Two would lift a big hand facetiously, when he came into the shop.
"Cripes put that damn shiv away, Tif!" Art snapped. "Or lose it someplace!" Ramos, who was a part-time mechanic at the same garage where Tiflin worked, couldn't help taunting. "Yeah smoking, too. Oh-oh. Using up precious oxygen. Better quit, pal. Can't do much of that Out There." This was a wrong moment to rib Tiflin. He was in an instant flare. But he ground out the cigarette at once, bitterly.
"Tiflin I don't know about. Could be... Hell, though what now? I suppose we're going in about the same direction and at the same speed as before? Have to watch the sun and planets to make sure. Did they leave us any instruments? Meanwhile, we might try to decelerate. I'd like to get out to Pluto sometime, but not equipped like this."
"Igor a friend named Tiflin wouldn't be being around some place, would he?" The large space comedian didn't even hesitate. "I am thinking not very far not knowing precisely. Somebody more is being here, likewise. Belt Parnay. You are knowing this one? Plenty Jollies new fellas not having much supplies only many new rocket launchers they are receiving from someplace. You are understanding this?
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