She smiled. “Don’t be silly, Johnny. This is Ben’s treat. I have a pass that takes care of things hke this. Dig in and don’t worry about the checkl”
He dug in. He hadn’t eaten that well in his life—and certainly not since August 11, 2793, a day he remembered vividly. That was the day Klingsan Defense Screens of Terra, Incorporated, had decided it could do without his scientific services.
As he ate, he thought about the events of that day. He remembered, wincing involuntarily, reporting to work two hours late and a good three sheets to the wind, and finding the pink discharge slip on his desk. He had snorted angrily and gone storming down to the executive level to see Old Man Klingsan himself. He had burst into the office of the company head, demanding to know why he was being fired.
Klingsan had told him. Then Mantell had told Klingsan three or five things that had been on his mind for a while, and by the time he was through talking he had succeeded in getting himself blacklisted from Rim to Core; there wasn’t a world in the galaxy that would give him employment now.
A well-meaning friend had lined up a cheap job for him on Mulciber, far from Earth. He had shot his last ninety credits getting there from Viltuun, just in time to learn that his reputation had preceded him and he wasn’t wanted on Mulciber.
But he couldn’t leave without fare money. And for seven solid years he had never managed to accumulate enough cash in one chunk to pay for his transportation off that lazy, enervating semi-tropical world. Not until the day the Space Patrol came after him on a murder charge, and he’d had to get off.
“You’re brooding about something, Johnny,” Myra said suddenly. “I told you not to think of Mulciber any more. Try to forget it.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Mulciber,” he lied. “I was thinking—thinking that it’s perfectly permissible for me to skip out of here without paying the check. I mean, the restaurant owners don’t have any legal recourse. They can’t. There’s no specific law against it.”
“That’s true enough. But you won’t have any recourse, either, if they catch you and slice you up for steak. Or —if you like this place and ever want to come back— they’ll simply refuse you admittance. Or they could slip you some slow poison the next time you come in here to cadge a meal.”
He thought that over for a moment or two. Then a new and startling conclusion struck him. “You know something? I almost think an upside-down free-flying setup like this works out better than one based on a complex system of laws based on high moral precepts and obsolete customs. Here, the crimes cancel each other out into zeros!”
She nodded. “That’s Ben’s big idea. If you take a group of people, none of whom are cluttered up by morals, and enforce this kind of code on them, their collective rascality will all even out into a pretty regular, practical kind of law-observance. It’s only when you start throwing virtuous people into the system that it falls apart.”
Mantell frowned. He had the feeling that there was an inconsistency somewhere in her glib argument, but at the moment he was not interested in finding it.
He grinned at her. “You know, I think I’m going to like this place,” he said.
Chapter VI
There were a few stray threads of conversation after that, but they petered out quickly and they finished eating in silence. Against the backdrop of the singing violins (not violins really, he knew, but merely tones produced by an electronic musical synthesizer somewhere in the giant building) Mantell thought, This is quite a woman! He was trying to imagine—without success—what thing she could have done that would have forced her to take refuge here on Starhaven from the galactic police system.
It was hard to figure what crime lay in the girl’s past. She seemed too clean, too pure. Mantell was well aware that she was no angel; but even so, she gave the appearance of innocence, making it seem as if she always acted out of the highest motives.
Mantell didn’t regard himself as a hardened criminal, either. He kept telhng himself he was just a victim of circumstances. The breaks of life could as easily have gone the other way for him, and instead of becoming a desperate wanderer on a tourist planet like Mulciber, he could have remained a skilled armaments technician back on Earth.
He scowled. He was still an armaments technician, he told himself. Only not on Earth but here on Starhaven, where nobody would plague him with cheap moralizing.
And where there was Myra.
He wondered, as he sat staring at her, how he was going to get away with it.
Obviously she was Thurdan’s girl. That was an obstacle that would stop most men right away. On a planet like this, a man doesn’t try to walk away with the absolute tyrant’s girl if he intends to enjoy a long life. Of course, there was always the possibility that Thurdan might tire of her. . . .
Who are you kidding? he asked himself. Sure, Thurdan would tire of her. Any minute now, he thought bitterly. Who could ever tire of her?
Mantell’s mood darkened. He told himself he would have to forget any intentions he might have in regard to Myra Butler. Otherwise he would be up to his ears in deep trouble, and he had been on Starhaven less than a day.
The robot servitors appeared and cleared away the remnants of the meal. There was still half a bottle of wine left, but Mantell had neither the desire nor the room for it now. He watched the robot clear the wine away with the rest of the things, and grinned.
“I never thought I’d last long enough to pass up a half-full bottle of wine,” he said.
He leaned back. He felt warm and well-fed, with the taste of rare wine still on his lips.
“Where to now?” he asked.
She smiled. “Do you dance?”
“More or less. I’m a little out of practice.”
“That doesn’t matter. Come. The ballroom’s three levels above.”
Mantell felt little desire to dance just now. But she continued pleadingly, “I love to dance, Johnny. And Ben won’t ever dance with me. He never will. He hates dancing of any kind.”
Mantell shrugged agreeably. “Anything to oblige a lady, I always say. If you want to dance, let’s go.”
Together they drifted out of the dining hall and into the waiting lift tube, and up three levels to the ballroom. Mantell realized in astonishment that ninety per cent of the Pleasure Dome was still above them, even here on the twelfth level.
The ballroom was a huge arching room, magnificently decorated. Music throbbed out of a hundred concealed speakers. Glowing dabs of soft living light, red and blue and gentle violet, swung and bobbed mistily in the air just above the dancers. It was a stunning sight, a scene out of a picture book.
“For a man who doesn’t like to dance, Thurdan built quite a dance hall,” Mantell observed.
“That’s one of Bens specialties—catering to other people’s likes. It keeps the people loyal to him.”
“Ben’s a shrewd man,” Mantell said.
“The shrewdest there ever was,” agreed Myra.
They stepped out onto the dance floor. Myra glided into his arms. They began to dance.
It had been years since the last time Mantell had been on a dance floor. On Mulciber he simply hadn’t thought in terms of luxuries like dancing; the struggle for life was too intense. And on Earth, he had always been too busy with less frivolous things.
But here, on this pleasure planet, he could make up for lost time.
There was a modified antigravity shield mounted beneath the gleaming dark luciphrine plastic of the dance floor. The field was on lowest modulation, not strong enough to lift the dancers from the surface of the floor but mustering enough power to cut down their weight somewhere between thirty and forty per cent, Mantell estimated.