Charley
was better than going nuts, he thought, and there was not too much
danger of smart answers.

He worked quickly, repairing the inadvertent damage Charley's pique
had caused. It took ten full minutes, and the heat-deadline was too
close for comfort. He finished and breathed more freely as
temperatures began to drop. He peeled off the helmet and unzipped the
suit which was reaching the thermal levels of a live-steam bath.

He ran tape through the charger to impregnate electronic setting that
would guide the ship on its course to Crystal City. "We were on our
way, there, anyhow," he mused. "I hope they've improved the jail. It
could stand air-conditioning."

II

Crystal City made up in violence what it lacked in size. It was a
typical boom town of the Lunar mining regions. Mining and a thriving
spacefreight trade in heavy metals made it a mecca for the toughest
space-screws and hardest living prospector-miners to be found in the
inhabited worlds. Saloons and cheap lodging-houses, gambling dens and
neon-washed palaces of expensive sin, the jail and a flourishing
assortment of glittery funeral parlors faced each other across two
main intersecting streets. X marked the spot and life was the least
costly of the many commodities offered for sale to rich-strike suckers
who funneled in from all Luna.

The town occupied the cleared and leveled floor of a small ringwall
"crater," and beneath its colorful dome of rainbowy perma-plastic, it
sizzled. Dealers in mining equipment made overnight fortunes which
they lost at the gaming tables just as quickly. In the streets one
rubbed elbows with denizens from every part of the solar system; many
of them curiously not anthropomorphic. Glittering and painted
purveyors of more tawdry and shopworn goods than mining equipment also
made fortunes overnight, and some of them paid for their greedy
snatching at luxury with their empty lives. Brawls were sporadic and
usually fatal.

Crystal City sizzled, and the Lunar Police sat on the lid as uneasily
as if the place were a charge of high-explosive. It was, but it made
living conditions difficult for a policeman, and made the
desk-sergeant's temper extremely short.

Tod Denver's experience with police stations had consisted chiefly of
uncomfortable stays as an invited, reluctant guest. To a hard-drinking
man, such invitations are both frequent and inescapable. So Tod Denver
was uneasy in the presence of such an obviously ill-tempe