They told him he hated Earth, beating him
until he nearly died—for he must be convinced!...
It was all part of his indoctrination as a—
Cosmic Saboteur
By Frank M. Robinson
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1955
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They jumped him when he was walking past an alley, a couple of blocksfrom the stockyards on Chicago's brawling South Side.
He had gotten off the "El" two stops down because it was a damn fineSpring morning and he liked to walk through the Polish section andwatch the city wake up. He was 17 years old and he hadn't grown cynicalwith the world yet. He liked the clean, fresh smell of the earlymorning and he got a kick out of the sleepy-eyed housewives in theirratty bathrobes, banging open the front door to bring in the milk andthe morning paper.
He'd pick up the live-stock reports, he thought, hop an "El" backuptown and maybe he'd be at Amalgamated News Service only a couple ofminutes late. And if they didn't like it, they knew what they could doabout it. His kid brother ran copy at the News and he said they coulduse another boy down there.
"Stan," Larry had said, "you're wasting your time at AMS. You won'tget as much dough at the News but you'll learn something."
Which was something to consider because Larry was one bright cookie andsomeday he was really going to be somebody....
It was early morning and nobody had started to work yet—the streetswere deserted. There was a chill in the air and he stopped by an openalley to light a weed and take the clamminess out of his lungs.
And then he got it.
A handful of knuckles right in the mouth, splintering his teeth andsplitting his lip so he sprayed blood like somebody had squeezed asponge. It was hard to get a good look because the shock had filled hiseyes with tears. But there were three of them and they were grown menand the biggest he had seen outside of a television wrestling match.
He screamed "Help!" just once before a hand as big as a typewriterburied itself wrist deep in his stomach. He doubled up and went limp,gasping for breath. One of the men caught him by the jacket collar andpulled him further into the alley, to the back of a restaurant wherethere was a small mountain of empty boxes and garbage cans full oforange peels and eggshells and stale doughnuts.
Nobody said a word.
He was still fighting for his breath and feeling sick when theystood him up against the refuse pile and started going over himscientifically, cutting his face and hitting him in the kidneys. Hetried to blink away the blood that kept streaming into his eyes, toget a good look at them. But they kept working on his face until allthe world was a bloody haze and it was hard to even make out light andshadow....
He lashed out once and heard a satisfying grunt and then somebody hithis wrists with a slat of wood, deadening the nerves so he couldn'tclose his hands. He tried to scream but he had no wind left and herealized dimly it wouldn't have done much good. The streets weredeserted and it was the type of neighborhood where nobody went toanybody else's rescue—least of all, early in the morning.
A fist caught him flush on the side of the jaw and he staggered overagainst the garbage cans and fell to the bricks, his face half buriedin the stinking garbage. He played dead dog for a moment, catching