Part 2

"I told you," Gus accused him, "that we hadn't got them all. You better take another good look at your suit. The danged things burrow right into solid metal and pull the hole in after them, seems like. Sneakiest cusses in the whole dang system. Just like chiggers back on Earth."

"Chiggers," Meek told him, "burrow into a person to lay eggs."

"Maybe these things do, too," Gus contended.

The radio on the mantel blared a warning signal, automatically tuning in on one of the regular newscasts from Titan City out on Saturn's biggest moon.

The syrupy, chamber of commerce voice of the announcer was shaky with excitement and pride.

"Next week," he said, "the annual Martian-Earth football game will be played at Greater New York on Earth. But in the Earth's newspapers tonight another story has pushed even that famous classic of the sporting world down into secondary place."

He paused and took a deep breath and his voice practically yodeled with delight.

"The sporting event, ladies and gentlemen, that is being talked up and down the streets of Earth tonight, is one that will be played here in our own Saturnian system. A space polo game. To be played by two unknown, pick-up, amateur teams down in the Inner Ring. Most of the men have never played polo before. Few if any of them have even seen a game. There may have been some of them who didn't, at first, know what it was.

"But they're going to play it. The men who ride those bucking rocks that make up the Inner Ring will go out into space in their rickety ships and fight it out. And ladies and gentlemen, when I say fight it out, I really mean fight it out. For the game, it seems, will be a sort of tournament, the final battle in a feud that has been going on in the Ring for years. No one knows what started the feud. It has gotten so it really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that when men from sector Twenty-three meet those from sector Thirty-seven, the feud is taken up again. But that is at an end now. In a few days the feud will be played out to its bitter end when the ships from the Inner Ring go out into space to play that most dangerous of all sports, space polo. For the outcome of that game will decide, forever, the supremacy of one of the two sectors."

* * * * *

Meek rose from his chair, opened his mouth as if to speak, but sank back again when Gus hissed at him and held a finger to his lips for silence.

"The teams are now in training," went on the newscaster, the happy lilt in his voice still undimmed, "and it is understood that sector Twenty-three has the advantage, at the start at least, of having a polo expert as its coach. Just who this expert is no one can say. Several names have been mentioned, but...."

"No, no," yelped Meek, struggling to his feet, but Gus shushed him, poking a finger toward him and grinning like a bearded imp.

"... Bets are mounting high throughout the entire Saturnian system," the announcer was saying, "but since little is known about the teams, the odds still are even. It is likely, however, that odds will be demanded on the sector of Thirty-seven team on the basis of the story about the expert coach.

"The very audacity of such a game has attracted solar-wide attention and special fleets of ships will leave both Earth and Mars within the next few days to bring spectators to the game. Newsmen from the inner worlds, among them some of the system's most famous sports writers, are already on their way.

"Originally intended to be no more than a recreation project under the supervision of the department of health and welfare, the game has suddenly become a solar attraction. The _Daily Rocket_ back on Earth is offering a gigantic loving cup for the winning team, while the _Morning Spaceways_ has provided another loving cup, only slightly smaller, to be presented the player adjudged the most valuable to his team. We may have more to tell you about the game before the newscast is over, but in the meantime we shall go on to other news of Solar int...."

Meek leaped up. "He meant me," he whooped. "That was me he meant when he was talking about a famous coach!"

"Sure," said Gus. "He couldn't have meant anyone else but you."

"But I'm not a famous coach," protested Meek. "I'm not even a coach at all. I never saw but one space polo game in all my life. I hardly know how it's played. I just know you go up there in space and bat a ball around. I'm going to...."

"You ain't going to do a blessed thing," said Gus. "You ain't skipping out on us. You're staying right here and give us all the fine pointers of the game. Maybe you ain't as hot as the newscaster made out, but you're a dang sight better than anyone else around here. At least you seen a game once and that's more than any of the rest of us have."

"But I...."

"I don't know what's the matter with you," declared Gus. "You're just pretending you don't know anything about polo, that's all. Maybe you're a fugitive from justice. Maybe that's why you're so anxious to make a getaway. Only reason you stopped at all was because your ship got stoved up."

"I'm no fugitive," declared Meek, drawing himself up. "I'm just a bookkeeper out to see the system."

"Forget it," said Gus. "Forget it. Nobody around here's going to give you away. If they even so much as peep, I'll plain paralyze them. So you're a bookkeeper. That's good enough for me. Just let anyone say you ain't a bookkeeper and see what happens to him."

Meek opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. What was the use? Here he was, stuck again. Just like back on Juno when that preacher had thought he was a gunman and talked him into taking over the job of cleaning up the town. Only this time it was a space polo game and he knew even less about space polo than he did about being a lawman.

Gus rose and limped slowly across the room. Ponderously, he hauled a red bandanna out of his back pocket and carefully dusted off the one uncrowded space on the mantel shelf, between the alarm clock and the tarnished silver model of a rocket ship.

"Yes, sir," he said, "she'll look right pretty there."

He backed away and stared at the place on the shelf.

"I can almost see her now," he said. "Glinting in the lamplight. Something to keep me company. Something to look at when I get lonesome."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Meek.

"That there cup the radio was talking about," said Gus. "The one for the most valuable team member."

Meek stammered. "But ... but...."

"I'm going to win her," Gus declared.

IV

Saturn Inn bulged. Every room was crowded, with half a dozen to the cubicle, sleeping in relays. Those who couldn't find anywhere else to sleep spread blankets in the narrow corridors or dozed off in chairs or slept on the barroom floor. A few of them got stepped on.

Titan City's Junior Chamber of Commerce had done what it could to help the situation out, but the notice had been short. A half-dozen nearby rocks which had been hastily leveled off for parking space, now were jammed with hundreds of space vehicles, ranging from the nifty two man job owned by Billy Jones, sports editor of the _Daily Rocket_, to the huge excursion liners sent out by the three big transport companies. A few hastily-erected shelters helped out to some extent, but none of these shelters had a bar and were mostly untenanted.

Moe, the bartender at the Inn, harried with too many customers, droopy with lack of sleep, saw Oliver Meek bobbing around in the crowd that surged against the bar, much after the manner of a cork caught in a raging whirlpool. He reached out a hand and dragged Meek against the bar.

"Can't you do something to stop it?"

Meek blinked at him. "Stop what?"

"This game," said Moe. "It's awful, Mr. Meek. Honestly. The crowd has got the fellers so worked up, it's apt to be mass murder."

"I know it," Meek agreed, "but you can't stop it now. The Junior Chamber of Commerce would take the hide off anyone who even said he would like to see it stopped. It's more publicity than Saturn has gotten since the first expeditions were lost here."

"I don't like it," declared Moe, stolidly.

"I don't like it either," Meek confessed. "Gus and those other fellows on his team think I'm an expert. I told them what I knew about space polo, but it wasn't much. Trouble is they think it's everything there is to know. They figure they're a cinch to win and they got their shirts bet on the game. If they lose, they'll more than likely space-walk me."

Fingers tapped Meek's shoulders and he twisted around. A red face loomed above him, a cigarette drooping from the corner of its lips.

"Hear you say you was coaching the Twenty-three bunch?"

Meek gulped.

"Billy Jones, that's me," said the lips with the cigarette. "Best damn sports writer ever pounded keys. Been trying to find out who you was. Nobody else knows. Treat you right."

"You must be wrong," said Meek.

"Never wrong," insisted Jones. "Nose for news. Smell it out. Like this. _Sniff. Sniff._"

His nose crinkled in imitation of a bloodhound, but his face didn't change otherwise. The cigarette still dangled, pouring smoke into a watery left eye.

"Heard the guy call you Meek," said Jones. "Name sounds familiar. Something about Juno, wasn't it? Rounded up a bunch of crooks. Found a space monster of some sort."

Another hand gripped Meek by the shoulder and literally jerked him around.

"So you're the guy!" yelped the owner of the hand. "I been looking for you. I've a good notion to smack you in the puss."

"Now, Bud," yelled Moe, in mounting fear, "you leave him alone. He ain't done a thing."

Meek gaped at the angry face of the hulking man, who still had his shoulder in the grip of a monstrous paw.

Bud Craney! The ring-rat that had stolen Gus' injector! The captain of the Thirty-seven team.

"If there was room," Craney grated, "I'd wipe up the floor with you. But since there ain't, I'm just plain going to hammer you down about halfway into it."

"But he ain't done nothing!" shrilled Moe.

"He's an outsider, ain't he?" demanded Craney. "What business he got coming in here and messing around with things?"

"I'm not messing around with things, Mr. Craney," Meek declared, trying to be dignified about it. But it was hard to be dignified with someone lifting one by the shoulder so one's toes just barely touched the floor.

"All that's the matter with you," insisted the dangling Meek, "is that you know Gus and his men will give you a whipping. They'd done it, anyhow. I haven't helped them much. I haven't helped them hardly at all."

Craney howled in rage. "Why ... you ... you...."

And then Oliver Meek did one of those things no one ever expected him to do, least of all himself.

"I'll bet you my spaceship," he said, "against anything you got."

Astonished, Craney opened his hand and let him down on the floor.

"You'll what?" he roared.

"I'll bet you my spaceship," said Meek, the madness still upon him, "that Twenty-three will beat you."

He rubbed it in. "I'll even give you odds."

Craney gasped and sputtered. "I don't want any odds," he yelped. "I'll take it even. My moss patch against your ship."

Someone was calling Meek's name in the crowd.

"Mr. Meek! Mr. Meek!"

"Here," said Meek.

"What about that story?" demanded Billy Jones, but Meek didn't hear him.

A man was tearing his way through the crowd. It was one of the men from Twenty-three.

"Mr. Meek," he panted, "you got to come right away. It's Gus. He's all tangled up with rheumatiz!"

* * * * *

Gus stared up with anguished eyes at Meek.

"It sneaked up on me while I slept," he squeaked. "Laid off of me for years until just now. Limped once in a while, of course, and got a few twinges now and then, but that was all. Never had me tied up like this since I left Earth. One of the reasons I never did go back to Earth. Space is good climate for rheumatiz. Cold but dry. No moisture to get into your bones."

Meek looked around at the huddled men, saw the worry that was etched upon their faces.

"Get a hot water bottle," he told one of them.

"Hell," said Russ Jensen, a hulking framed spaceman, "there ain't no such a thing as a hot water bottle nearer than Titan City."

"An electric pad, then."

Jensen shook his head. "No pads, neither. Only thing we can do is pour whiskey down him and if we pour enough down him to cure the rheumatiz, we'll get him drunk and he won't be no more able to play in that game than he is right now."

Meek's weak eyes blinked behind his glasses, staring at Gus.

"We'll lose sure if Gus can't play," said Jensen, "and me with everything I got bet on our team."

Another man spoke up. "Meek could play in Gus' place."

"Nope, he couldn't," declared Jensen. "The rats from Thirty-seven wouldn't stand for it."

"They couldn't do a thing about it," declared the other man. "Meek's been here six weeks today. That makes him a resident. Six Earth weeks, the law says. And all that time he's been in sector Twenty-three. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on. They might squawk but they couldn't make it stick."

"You're certain of that?" demanded Jensen.

"Dead certain," said the other.

Meek saw them looking at him, felt a queasy feeling steal into his stomach.

"I couldn't," he told them. "I couldn't do it. I ... I...."

"You go right ahead, Oliver," said Gus. "I wanted to play, of course. Sort of set my heart on that cup. Had the mantel piece all dusted off for it. But if I can't play, there ain't another soul I'd rather have play in my place than you."

"But I don't know a thing about polo," protested Meek.

"You taught it to us, didn't you?" bellowed Jensen. "You pretended like you knew everything there was to know."

"But I don't," insisted Meek. "You wouldn't let me explain. You kept telling me all the time what a swell coach I was and when I tried to argue with you and tell you that I wasn't you yelled me down. I never saw more than one game in all my life and the only reason I saw it then was because I found the ticket. It was on the sidewalk and I picked it up. Somebody had dropped it."

"So you been stringing us along," yelped Jensen. "You been making fools of us! How do we know but you showed us wrong. You been giving us the wrong dope."

He advanced on Meek and Meek backed against the wall.

Jensen lifted his fist, held it in front of him as if he were weighing it.

"I ought to bop you one," he decided. "All of us had ought to bop you one. Every danged man in this here room has got his shirt bet on the game because we figured we couldn't lose with a coach like you."

"So have I," said Meek. But it wasn't until he said it that he really realized he did have his shirt bet on Twenty-three. His spaceship. It wasn't all he had, of course, but it was the thing that was nearest to his heart ... the thing he had slaved for thirty years to buy.

He suddenly remembered those years now. Years of bending over account books in the dingy office back on Earth, watching other men go out in space, longing to go himself. Counting pennies so that he could go. Spending only a dime for lunch and eating crackers and cheese instead of going out for dinner in the evening. Piling up the dollars, slowly through the years ... dollars to buy the ship that now stood out on the field, all damage repaired. Sitting, poised for space.

But if Thirty-seven won it wouldn't be his any longer. It would be Craney's. He'd just made a bet with Craney and there were plenty of witnesses to back it up.

"Well?" demanded Jensen.

"I will play," said Meek.

"And you really know about the game? You wasn't kidding us?"

Meek looked at the men before him and the expression on their faces shaped his answer.

He gulped ... gulped again. Then slowly nodded.

"Sure, I know about it," he lied.

They didn't look quite satisfied.

He glanced around, but there was no way of escape. He faced them again, back pressed against the wall.

He tried to make his voice light and breezy, but he couldn't quite keep out the croak.

"Haven't played it much in the last few years," he said, "but back when I was a kid I was a ten-goal man."

They were satisfied at that.

V

Hunched behind the controls, Meek slowly circled Gus' crate, waiting for the signal, half fearful of what would happen when it came.

Glancing to left and right, he could see the other ships of Sector Twenty-three, slowly circling too, red identification lights strung along their hulls.

Ten miles away a gigantic glowing ball danced in the middle of the space-field, bobbing around like a jigging lantern. And beyond it were the circling blue lights of the Thirty-seven team. And beyond them the glowing green space-buoys that marked the Thirty-seven goal line.

Meek bent an attentive ear to the ticking of the motor, listening intently for the alien click he had detected a moment before. Gus' ship, to tell the truth, was none too good. It might have been a good ship once, but now it was worn out. It was sluggish and slow to respond to the controls, it had a dozen little tricks that kept one on the jump. It had followed space trails too long, had plumped down to too many bumpy landings in the maelstrom of the Belt.

Meek sighed gustily. It would have been different if they had let him take his own ship, but it was only on the condition that he use Gus' ship that Thirty-seven had agreed to let him play at all. They had raised a fuss about it, but Twenty-three had the law squarely on its side.

He stole a glance toward the sidelines and saw hundreds of slowly cruising ships. Ships crammed with spectators out to watch the game. Radio ships that would beam a play by play description to be channeled to every radio station throughout the Solar system. Newsreel ships that would film the clash of opposing craft. Ships filled with newsmen who would transmit reams of copy back to Earth and Mars.

Looking at them, Meek shuddered.

How in the world had he ever let himself get into a thing like this? He was out to see the solar system, not to play a polo game ... especially a polo game he didn't want to play.

It had been the bugs, of course. If it hadn't been for the bugs, Gus never would have had the chance to talk him into that coaching business.

He should have spoken out, of course. Told them, flat out, that he didn't know a thing about polo. Made them understand he wasn't going to have a thing to do with this silly scheme. But they had shouted at him and laughed at him and bullied him. Been nice to him, too. That was the biggest trouble. He was a sucker, he knew, for anyone who was nice to him. Not many people had been.

Maybe he should have gone to Miss Henrietta Perkins and explained. She might have listened and understood. Although he wasn't any too sure about that. She probably had plenty to do with starting the publicity rolling. After all, it was her job to make a showing on the jobs she did.

If it hadn't been for Gus dusting off the place on the mantelpiece. If it hadn't been for the Titan City Junior Chamber of Commerce. If it hadn't been for all the ballyhoo about the mystery coach.

But more especially, if he'd kept his fool mouth shut and not made that bet with Craney.

* * * * *

Meek groaned and tried to remember the few things he did know about polo. And he couldn't think of a single thing, not even some of the things he had made up and told the boys.

Suddenly a rocket flared from the referee's ship and with a jerk Meek hauled back the throttle. The ship gurgled and stuttered and for a moment, heart in his throat, Meek thought it was going to blow up right then and there.

But it didn't. It gathered itself together and leaped, forcing Meek hard against the chair, snapping back his head. Dazed, he reached out for the repulsor trigger.

Ahead the glowing ball bounced and quivered, jumped this way and that as the ships spun in a mad melee with repulsor beams whipping out like stabbing knives.

Two of the ships crashed and fell apart like matchboxes. A third, trying a sharp turn above the field of play, came unstuck and strewed itself across fifty miles of space.

Substitute ships dashed in from the sidelines, signalled by the referee's blinking light. Rescue ships streaked out to pick up the players, salvage ships to clear away the pieces.

For a fleeting moment, Meek got the bobbing sphere in the cross-hairs and squeezed the trigger. The ball jumped as if someone had smacked it with his fist, sailed across the field.

Fighting to bring the ship around, Meek yelled in fury at its slowness. Desperately pouring on the juice, he watched with agony as a blue-lighted ship streamed down across the void, heading for the ball.

The ship groaned in every joint, protesting and twisting as if in agony, as Meek forced it around. Suddenly there was a snap and the sudden swoosh of escaping air. Startled, Meek looked up. Bare ribs stood out against star-spangled space. A plate had been ripped off!

Face strained behind the visor of his spacesuit, hunched over the controls, he waited for the rest of the plates to go. By some miracle they hung on. One worked loose and flapped weirdly as the ship shivered in the turn.

But the turn had taken too long and Meek was too late. The blue-lamped ship already had the ball, was streaking for the goal line. Jensen somehow had had sense enough to refuse to be sucked out of goalie position, and now he charged in to intercept.

But he muffed his chance. He dived in too fast and missed with his repulsor beam by a mile at least. The ball sailed over the lighted buoys and the first chukker was over with Thirty-seven leading by one score.

The ships lined up again.

The rocket flared from the starter's ship and the ships plunged out. One of Thirty-seven's ships began to lose things. Plates broke loose and fell away, a rocket snapped its moorings and sailed off at a tangent, spouting gouts of flame, the structural ribs came off and strewed themselves along like spilling toothpicks.

Battered by repulsor beams, the ball suddenly bounced upward and Meek, trailing the field, waiting for just such a chance, played a savage tune on the tube controls.

The ship responded with a snap, executing a half roll and a hairpin turn that shook the breath from Meek. Two more plates tore off in the turn, but the ship plowed on. Now the ball was dead ahead and Meek gave it the works. The beam hit squarely and Meek followed through. The second chukker was over and the score was tied.

Not until he was curving back above the Thirty-seven goal line, did Meek have time to wonder what had happened to the ship. It was sluggish no longer. It was full of zip. Almost like driving his own sleek craft. Almost as if, the ship knew where he wanted it to go and went there.

A hint of motion on the instrument panel caught his eye and he bent close to see what it was. He stiffened. The panel seemed to be alive. Seemed to be crawling.

He bent closer and froze. It was crawling. There was no doubt of that. Crawling with rock-bugs.

* * * * *

Breath whistling between his teeth, Meek ducked his head under the panel. Every wire, every control was oozing bugs!

For a moment he sat paralyzed by the thoughts that flickered through his brain.

Gus, he knew, would have his scalp for this. Because he was the one that had brought the bugs over to the rock where Gus lived and kept the ship. They thought, of course, they had caught all of them that were on his suit, but now it was clear they hadn't. Some of them must have gotten away and found the ship. They would have made straight for it, of course, because of the alloys that were in it. Why bother with a spacesuit or anything else when there was a ship around.

Only there were too many of them. There were thousands in the instrument panel and other thousands in the controls and he couldn't have brought back that many. Not if he'd hauled them back in pails.