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shook my head at Rusty. I wasn't going to interfere with Doc now.
"You're not scared, are you, Mr. Holden?" said Doc quietly. "Just you
stand against the wall and take it easy. It won't hurt a bit."
URT HOLDEN was plenty tough for an Outsider, and a hard-
B headed businessman to boot, but he'd never run into a customer
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like Doc before. You could see him trying to make up his mind on how
to handle this thing. He glanced around quick at the crowd, and I could
tell he decided to play it out to where Doc would have to draw in his
horns. He actually grinned, for the effect it would have on everybody
watching. "All right, Yoris," he said. He backed against the wall and fol-
ded his arms. "But hadn't you better stand up here with me?"
"I ain't going," said Doc. "I don't like Mars. But you won't have no
trouble getting your gold. There's nuggets the size of your fist laying all
over the dry river beds."
"I hate to be nosey," said Burt, playing to the crowd, "but how are you
going to get me there?"
"With his head, o'course!" blurted Rusty before I could stop him. "Just
like he cures you when you're sick!" Doc had pulled Rusty through two
or three bad kid sicknesses and a lot of the rest of us, too.
"Yep," said Doc. "A man don't need one of them rocket things to get
between here and Mars. Fact is, I never seen one."
Burt looked at the ceiling like he was a martyr, then back at Doc. "Well,
Yoris," he said in a tone that meant he was just about through humoring
him, "I'm waiting. Can you send me there or can't you?" The start of a
nasty smile was beginning to show at the corners of his mouth.
"Sure," said Doc. He slumped down in his chair and cupped his hands
lightly around his dark glasses. I noticed his fingers trembling a little
against his forehead.
The lights dimmed, flickered and went out, and we waited for the bar-
tender to put in a new fuse. The power around here doesn't go haywire
except in the winter, when trees fall across the lines. A small fight started
over in a corner.
When the lights came back on, Doc and Pop started for the door, and
Lew and Rusty and I followed. Burt's buddies were looking kind of
puzzled, and a few old-timers were moving over to watch the fight. The
rest were heading back to the bar.
Rusty piled into the jeep with Doc and me. "When you going to bring
him back, Doc?" he asked when we started moving.
"Dunno," said Doc. He took off his glasses to watch me shift gears.
He's been after me for a long time to teach him how to drive. "It only
works on a man once."
THE END
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Also available on Feedbooks:
" "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", Anne Brontë
" "The Golden Ass", Lucius Apuleius
" "Within A Budding Grove", Marcel Proust
" "Silas Marner", George Eliot
" "Almuric", Robert Ervin Howard
" "My Ántonia", Willa Cather
" "The Prophet", Kahlil Gibran
" "The Way of the Bow", Paulo Coelho
" "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", Victor Hugo
" "Maida's Little Shop", Inez Haynes Irwin
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www.feedbooks.com
Food for the mind
11
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