Hold safe to stable gravity!

For we of space live DEATH!

I stuck my head precariously in the compartment door. It was the end of the song and they all sat there weeping, about twenty of them.

"Is there a doctor aboard?" I asked in general.

A big, tough ape, probably wanted on half the planets for numerous crimes, turned his tearful eyes to me and then pointed silently across the passageway. The hand air organ was starting up again.

I made out a sign, very smudged: Health Officer. Do Not Open.

With a one-handed effort, I undid the seal cogs and stumbled into the room. A blast of decayed meat and tup fumes hit me. Somebody was snoring on the gimbal bed. With some difficulty, I woke him up.

Bleary-eyed, this doctor was representative of the profession, not the way they like to be seen in song and story but the way they really are: a stinking wreck.

"My arm," I said. "It suddenly has become paralyzed!"

"Well, buy a new one," he said and tried to turn over and resume snoring.

With some struggle I got him to sit up. "I have money," I said.

That reached him. He got professional.

"I want you to tell me what's wrong with it," I said.

I got off my gunbelt and somehow managed to get out of my tunic, all without the slightest aid from him. He started to examine the wrong arm and I had to direct his attention.

With a lot of yawns and some time out to get another drink of tup, he asked some questions and prodded. The questions were mainly a hopeful, "Does that hurt?" when he poked.

He had some sort of machine and he made me stand in front of it. I hoped he was looking but I heard him drinking more tup.

"No slugs, no bone breaks, no burns," I heard him mutter. Then, with a shrug, he indicated I could get back into my jacket.

He was looking at me rather peculiarly. "Well," he said, "I know what's wrong with it now." I was just finishing buckling my gunbelt. His fingers were sort of twitching. I got out the ten-credit note. I intended to ask if he could change it for this action he was doing never cost more than two credits.

He took the note and put it in his pocket.

He gave a tremendous yawn and then he said, "The diagnosis is, you can't use your arm." With that, he showed every sign of getting back onto his gimbal bed. I blocked him. "You'll have to do better than that!" The doctor looked at me, very bored. "You want a technical term? All right: you had temporary hysterical paralysis of the upper articulation muscles." And he started to climb back onto his bed.

I shouted, "That doesn't handle anything!"

"There's nothing to handle," he said. "You apparently did not notice that you used your arm perfectly normally when you put your coat and belt back on." I stared. I looked down. I swung the arm. I flexed my fingers. There was nothing wrong with it! I could use it perfectly normally!

Once more he started to get back on the bed. "Wait, wait! What could cause that?"

"The machine showed you had no slugs in your head or foreign matter pressing the nerves of the spine. So there is no cause." I made my voice sound deadly. "You better tell me how such a condition could come about!" He saw plainly that he was not going to be able to get back on that gimbal bed unless he either moved me out of the way or said something I would accept.

The doctor shrugged. "Hysteria? Battle shock? You're an officer, so no electric shock can be used on you. A lot of things can cause it."

"Such as?" and I continued to block his way back to bed.

He looked vague. "Neurotic predisposition which then precipitated into a temporary manifestation? Hypnotism?"

"You've got to do more than this!" I said.

"For only ten credits? I'm no Slum City head plumber."

"That's five times the usual fee!" I said.

"You were five times as worried," he said. And he pushed me aside and lay down and shortly was snoring once more. A true professional.

Chapter 3

Back at the airbus, I walked around it several times, thinking. It was almost dusk. Every now and then I would flex my arm and fingers. They were working perfectly.

I was trying to sort out what the meat-chopper had said.

Learned as I was in Earth psychology, I knew very well that he was wrong about "neurotic predisposition." I am not neurotic. That left hypnotism. But aside from language training, I had not been hypnotized.

Certain it was that I was at severe risk. What if this happened again? Just when I was about to shoot somebody down, my arm didn't work! The thought made my hair prickle.

I did not dare go near an Apparatus practitioner. Any drilling into my unconscious might reveal too much. The practitioner would report that I was blabbing state secrets and that would be the end of me!

What else had that (bleeped) meat-slicer said? Ah, that he was no "Slum City head plumber." That was the clue. I had seen their signs. I made up a plan quickly, calling on my skilled talents in this sort of thing.

I went around to the door to get in.

My driver said, "How am I going to explain to Officer Heller when I can't return that costume deposit?" I hit him. I used my left hand as I couldn't trust my right. But I hit him.

I got in. "Take me to the Provocation Section at once!" I ordered.

We flew through the dusk over Government City, darted down to water level at the River Wiel and shortly zoomed into the tunnel of the shabby warehouses.

I got out. I trotted straight up the steps.

Raza Torr had been in the act of going home. He froze. He seemed to have turned bone white but it was hard to tell in the dim light.

I decided I had better put him at his ease. "Met any nice girls lately?" I said conversationally.

My former escort was behind me. They must have had burglars or troubles lately as he was holding a gun in his hand.

Raza Torr, in a sort of strangled voice said, "I'll take care of this." I led the way. I knew the place inside out now. I went to the civilian costume area. Raza Torr followed. The escort had vanished.

"I want a speedwheel suit," I said. "The street kind. Something plain." Raza Torr seemed to have recovered. Probably, I thought, he had had a hard day. He was a naturally nervous fellow. But he doesn't always have good sense. He walked over to the rack and got down a speedwheel suit: they are shiny, made of slick body-armor material. This one had flaring scarlet flame patterns painted all over it, it could be seen from a mile off and hurt the eyes even then.

"No, no," I said. I went to the rack and found a plain black one in my size. It had some accident blood caked on the collar but one can't be choosey and I was in a hurry.

"Now a helmet," I said and went over to that rack.

Again he got in my way and tried to give me a rider helmet with a flame plume and no visor. I pushed it aside and got a no-plume black visor one.

"Now a tri-knife," I said. I led the way over to the weapons section and finally found one. They are a great knife. Criminals use them when they want to do a particularly gory murder. They are thin as a needle when their ten-inch blade goes in. When it hits bottom, the blade springs into a narrow fan, becoming three razor-edged blades. When you pull it out, a lot of guts come with it. They even have a ring in the hilt so you can yank back. Some knife fighters say they are too hard to draw out of a stabbed body, but that is just quibbling.

"Gods," said Raza Torr. "Who you going to kill?"

"I doubt I'll return these," I said.

"I doubt you will either," he said. I ignored the unjustified slur on my honesty. I was too intent on my project.

Back at my airbus, I directed my driver on a circuitous course to the outskirts of Slum City. Night had come. Real evening traffic had not yet started up. People in other cities were at their suppers. Not too many people in Slum City would have suppers to be at.