do, sonny! You'll do right well on
the Row. Join me in a little acceleration sport?"

"What's that?" asked Roger.

"Rocket juice!" said Shinny. "Ain't you never heard of rocket juice?"

"I've heard about it," said Roger with a smile, "and I'm still here to
talk about it because I never drank any of it." Roger liked the little
man for some reason--he couldn't tell why. He had met several people on
the Row since his arrival, but they had all wanted to know how many
credits he had and where he was staying.

"I took a jolt of that stuff once in Luna City," said Roger. "I was
ready to blast off without a rocket ship!"

Shinny laughed again. "Good lad! Well, you won't mind if I have just a
little one?" He paused and wiped his lips. "On you, of course!"

"One"--Roger held up his finger--"on me, of course!"

"Hey, there!" yelled Shinny. "You, with the asteroid head! Gimme a short
bucket of that juice and bring a bottle of Martian fizz along with it!"
The bartender nodded, and Shinny turned back to Roger. "Martian fizz is
nothing more than a little water with sugar in it," he explained.

"Yeah, I know," replied Roger. "What about those papers?"

"I'll talk to you, spaceman to spaceman," said Shinny, "when you're
ready to talk to me, spaceman to spaceman!"

They were silent while the bartender slopped a glass full of bluish
liquid in front of Shinny and the bottle of Martian fizz and a glass in
front of Roger. Roger paid for the drinks and poured a glass of the mild
sweet water. Sipping it silently, he suddenly put the glass down again
and looked Shinny in the eye.

"You know who I am," he stated quietly.

"Yep!" replied Shinny. "You're Roger Manning, Space Cadet! Breach of
honor and violation of the Spaceman's Oath. Escaped from the Venus space
station on a jet liner. But one of the best men on a radar scanner and
astrogation prism in the whole alliance!" Shinny related the information
rapidly.

"He had known all the time," thought Roger. "He was testing me." Roger
wondered why.

"What are you going to do about it?" questioned Roger, thinking about
the one-thousand-credit reward, standard price offered by the Solar
Guard for all wanted men.

"If I had wanted to, I could have bought the finest jet liner in space
with money made on Solar Guard rewards," snapped Shinny. "We got our own
spaceman's code here on the Row. It goes something like this. What a man
wants to bring with him down here, he brings. What he don