Lone Star Planet | Page 7

aboard a ship in
hyperspace--Hoddy and I began a positively epochal binge together.
I had it figured this way: as long as we were on board ship, I was
perfectly safe. On the ship, in fact, Hoddy would definitely have given

his life to save mine. I'd have to be killed on New Texas to give
Klüng's boys their excuse for moving in.
And there was always the chance, with no chance too slender for me to
ignore, that I might be able to get Hoddy drunk enough to talk, yet still
be sober enough myself to remember what he said.
Exact times, details, faces, names, came to me through a sort of hazy
blur as Hoddy and I drank something he called superbourbon--a New
Texan drink that Bourbon County, Kentucky, would never have
recognized. They had no corn on New Texas. This stuff was made out
of something called superyams.
There were at least two things I got out of the binge. First, I learned to
slug down the national drink without batting an eye. Second, I learned
to control my expression as I uncovered the fact that everything on
New Texas was supersomething.
I was also cautious enough, before we really got started, to leave my
belt and guns with the purser. I didn't want Hoddy poking around those
secret holsters. And I remember telling the captain to radio New Austin
as soon as we came out of our last hyperspace-jump, then to send the
ship's doctor around to give me my hangover treatments.
But the one thing I wanted to remember, as the hangover shots brought
me back to normal life, I found was the one thing I couldn't remember.
What was the name of that girl--a big, beautiful blond--who joined the
party along with Hoddy's grass widow from Alderbaran and stayed
with it to the end?
Damn, I wished I could remember her name!
When we were fifteen thousand miles off-planet and the lighters from
New Austin spaceport were reported on the way, I got into the
skin-tight Levis, the cataclysmic-colored shirt, and the loose vest,
tucked my big hat under my arm, and went to the purser's office for my
guns, buckling them on. When I got back to the suite, Hoddy had put
on his pistols and was practicing quick draws in front of the mirror. He

took one look at my armament and groaned.
"You're gonna get yourself killed for sure, with that rig, an' them
popguns," he told me.
"These popguns'll shoot harder and make bigger holes than that pair of
museum-pieces you're carrying," I replied.
"An' them holsters!" Hoddy continued. "Why, it'd take all day to get
your guns outa them! You better let me find you a real rig, when we get
to New Austin...."
There was a chance, of course, that he knew what I was using and
wanted to hide his knowledge. I doubted that.
"Sure, you State Department guys always know everything," he went
on. "Like them microfilm-books you was readin'. I try to tell you what
things is really like on New Texas, an' you let it go in one ear an' out
the other."
Then he wandered off to say good-bye to the grass widow from
Alderbaran, leaving me to make the last-minute check on the luggage. I
was hoping I'd be able to see that blond ... what was her name; Gail
something-or-other. Let's see, she'd been at some Terran university, and
she was on her way home to ... to New Texas! Of course!
I saw her, half an hour later, in the crowd around the airlock when the
lighters came alongside, and I tried to push my way toward her. As I
did, the airlock opened, the crowd surged toward it, and she was carried
along. Then the airlock closed, after she had passed through and before
I could get to it. That meant I'd have to wait for the second lighter.
So I made the best of it, and spent the next half-hour watching the disc
of the planet grow into a huge ball that filled the lower half of the
viewscreen and then lose its curvature, and instead of moving in toward
the planet, we were going down toward it.
CHAPTER III

New Austin spaceport was a huge place, a good fifty miles outside the
city. As we descended, I could see that it was laid out like a wheel, with
the landings and the blast-off stands around the hub, and high
buildings--packing houses and refrigeration plants--along the many
spokes. It showed a technological level quite out of keeping with the
accounts I had read, or the stories Hoddy had told, about the simple
ranch life of the planet. Might be foreign capital invested there, and I
made a mental note to find