ILLUSTRATED BY EBEL
They were the hired gun-rabble of the System, engaged
in the dirtiest, most thankless racket in all
the worlds. But Ash Holcomb was doing all right,
until the girl walked out of his past with high
stakes in her pockets and murder in her eyes!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Rocket Stories, July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Rocket Row is the Joy Street of three planets. It's got neon lights,crummy dives, cheap hotels, and women to match. Every man who's everrode a ship into space knows about Rocket Row. It runs along the farside of Flushing Spaceport, down toward the Sound.
The New Shanghai was full of dockworkers and crewmen on liberty. It wasnoisy. I sat on a bar stool and watched the fog trying to infiltratethe open door. It didn't have a chance against the tobacco smoke thatrolled out to meet it. Outside, the streets and alleys would be chokedwith wet, creeping darkness, full of quiet footsteps, and the copswould find empty-pocketed corpses behind the ashcans in the morning.
But none of that was any of my business. I was sick and tired offog—the real kind, the kind they grow on Venus—and I was sick of thethought of blood. I'd seen too much of it, soaking into the hot mud,and some of it spilled by my guns. I wanted to forget the night, andfog that gave cover to every kind of dirty deal a man could imagine. Iwanted to pull the corners of my world together until all that was leftwas the drink, the bar stool, and me. But it wasn't going to work outthat way, because I was in the New Shanghai on business.
And my kind of business was the dirtiest, lousiest, most thanklessracket in the world.
The bartender moved up to where I was sitting. "Have another one, Ash?"he asked.
"Yeah, sure, Ming," I said. "You still make the best Stingers in theSystem. Maybe that's because you don't brew your own gin."
"Could be, Ash, could be," he laughed. He shook up the drink and pouredit in my glass. "How'd it go on Venus?"
"It went," I said.
Ming was one of the few people who admitted knowing I was a D.O.—aDetached Operative. It was a crummy job, but it suited me.
We were the hired-gun rabble of the System, thrown together into thedamnedest police force there had ever been. Spacial expansion hadn'treally gotten underway until after the Terro-Martian War, and after itended every would-be bigshot there was had realized that all he reallyneeded to set himself up as a pocket-size dictator was some salvagedgear from the mess the war had left, a crew that wasn't too particular,and a good-looking piece of territory in the practically limitlessareas of space. Most of them had picked slices of Venus. There were afew in the Asteroids, hooked up with renegade Marties, and one or twothat had actually grabbed sections of Mars.
Sending regular law enforcement officers or Marines after each one ofthese boys would have been physically impossible. Earth government hadcome up with a cuter idea.
It was a lot more economical to fight one big decisive battle than toendure a series of inconclusive skirmishes. There were a lot of usboys out in space, most of us just drifting from one port to the next,picking up a living by our wits, and by our skill with a gun, some ofus. Earth government had quietly picked out the ones they consideredtrustworthy, sworn us in, and turned us loose with a few standingorders and a lot of dependence on our discretion.
Whenever something brewed between two of these minor warlords, we'dcome flocking in and