et on it... By the way, there's a grapevine yarn around.
Somebody kicked Fanshaw--the Jolly Lad big-shot--in the belly. You,
perhaps?"

"Don't listen to gossip," Nelsen said primly. "Are you serious about
going to Mercury?"

"Of course. There are people to take over my office duties. I'll be on
my way in a couple of weeks. I think you'd like to come along, Frank."

Nelsen felt an urge that was like a crying for freedom.

"Sure I would. But I'm bound to the wheel. Cripes, though--watch
yourself, fella. Don't _you_ get into a mess!"

"Hell--you're the mess specialist, Frank. Fanshaw isn't here for fun.
And there's been that new trouble at home..."

A Tovie bubb, loaded with people, and a Stateside bubb, both in orbit
around the Earth, had collided. No survivors. But there was plenty of
blaming and counter-blaming. Another dangerous incident. Glory--with all
the massed destructive power there was, could luck really last forever?

Frank Nelsen got back to Post One, okay. But later, riding in to Post
Three, just in an Archer Six, with a couple of guards for company, he
picked up a long-lost voice, falsely sweet, then savage at the end:

"I'm a Jinx, aren't I, Frankie? A vulture. Nice and cavalier, you are. I
bet you hoped I was dead. Okay--Sucker...!"

Tiflin didn't even answer when Nelsen tried to beam him.

Nelsen was able to save Post Three. The guards and most of the personnel
were experienced and tough. They drove the Jolly Lads back and deflected
some chunks of aimed and accelerated asteroid chips, with new defense
rockets.

Joe Kuzak, at Post Seven, wasn't so lucky, though Frank had tipped him
off. Half of the post was scattered and pirated. Six fellas and the wife
of one of them--a Bunch from Baltimore--were just drying shreds that
drifted in the wreckage. Big Joe, though he had a rocket chip through
his chest, had been able to beat off the attackers, with the help of a
few asteroid-hoppers and his novice crew which turned out to be more
rugged than some people might have expected.

Frank got to them just as it was over--except for the cursing, the
masculine tears of grief and rage, the promises of revenge. Luckily,
none of the women had been captured.

Joe Kuzak, full of new antibiotics and coagulants, was still up and
around. "So we knocked off a few of them, Frank," he said ruefully in
his office bubb. "Several were in Tovie armor. Runaways, or agents?
They're crowding us, boy. Hell, what a junk hea