"Uh, I guess not."
"Smart lad. Lay off the stuff. Irish for me, Percy, and we'll both have whatever you had for lunch." The Samoan waited silently. Sam shrugged and laid money on the table, Percy scooped it up.
Max objected, "But I was going to pay."
"You can pay for the lunch. Percy owns the place," he added. "He's offensively rich, but he didn't get that way by trusting the likes of me. Now tell me about yourself, old son. How you got here? How you made out with the astrogators ... everything. Did they kill the fatted calf?"
"Well, no." There seemed to be no reason not to tell Sam and he found that he wanted to talk. Sam nodded at the end.
"About what I had guessed. Any plans now?"
"No. I don't know what to do now, Sam."
"Hmm ... it's an ill wind that has no turning. Eat your lunch and let me think."
Later he added, "Max, what do you _want_ to do?"
"Well ... I wanted to be an astrogator ..."
"That's out."
"I know."
"Tell me, did you want to be an astrogator and nothing else, or did you simply want to go into space?"
"Why, I guess I never thought about it any other way."
"Well, think about it."
Max did so. "I want to space. If I can't go as an astrogator, I want to go anyhow. But I don't see how. The Astrogators' Guild is the only one I stood a chance for."
"There are ways."
"Huh? Do you mean put in for emigration?"
Sam shook his head. "It costs more than you could save to go to one of the desirable colonies--and the ones they give you free rides to I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies."
"Then what do you mean?"
Sam hesitated. "There are ways to wangle it, old son--if you do what I say. This uncle of yours--you were around him a lot?"
"Why, sure."
"Talked about space with you?"
"Certainly. That's all we talked about."
"Hmm ... how well do you know the patter?"
5 "...YOUR MONEY AND MY KNOW-HOW..."
"The patter?" Max looked puzzled. "I suppose I know what everybody knows."
"Where's the worry hole?"
"Huh? That's the control room."
"If the cheater wants a corpse, where does he find it?"
Max looked amused. "That's just stuff from SV serials, nobody talks like that aboard ship. The cook is the cook, and if he wanted a side of beef, he'd go to the reefer for it."
"How do you tell a 'beast' from an animal?"
"Why, a 'beast' is a passenger, but an animal is just an animal, I guess."
"Suppose you were on a ship for Mars and they announced that the power plant had gone blooie and the ship was going to spiral into the Sun? What would you think?"
"I'd think somebody was trying to scare me. In the first place, you wouldn't be 'on' a ship--'in' is the right word. Second, a spiral isn't one of the possible orbits. And third, if a ship was headed for Mars from Earth, it couldn't fall into the Sun; the orbit would be incompatible."
"Suppose you were part of a ship's crew in a strange port and you wanted to go out and look the place over. How would you go about asking the captain for permission?"
"Why, I wouldn't."
"You'd just jump ship?"
"Let me finish. If I wanted to hit dirt, I'd ask the first officer; the captain doesn't bother with such things. If the ship was big enough, I'd have to ask my department head first." Max sat up and held Sam's eye. "Sam--you've been spaceside. Haven't you?"
"What gave you that notion, kid?"
"What's your guild?"
"Stow it, Max. Ask me no questions and I'll sell you no pigs in a poke. Maybe I've studied up on the jive just as you have."
"I don't believe it," Max said bluntly.
Sam looked pained. Max went on, "What's this all about? You ask me a bunch of silly questions--sure, I know quite a bit about spaceside; I've been reading about it all my life and Uncle Chet would talk by the hour. But what of it?"
Sam looked at him and said softly, "Max--the _Asgard_ is raising next Thursday--for starside. Would you like to be in her?"
Max thought about it. To be in the fabulous _Asgard_, to be heading out to the stars, to be--he brushed the vision aside. "Don't talk that way, Sam! You know I'd give my right arm. Why needle me?"
"How much money have you?"
"Huh? Why?"
"How much?"
"I haven't even had time to count it." Max started to haul out the wad of bills he had been given; Sam hastily and unobtrusively stopped him.
"Psst!" he protested. "Don't flash a roll in here. Do you want to eat through a slit in your throat? Keep it down!"
Startled, Max took the advice. He was still more startled when he finished the tally; he had known that he had been given quite a lot of money but this was more than he had dreamed. "How much?" Sam persisted. Max told him, Sam swore softly. "Well, it will just have to do."
"Do for what?"
"You'll see. Put it away."
As Max did so he said wonderingly, "Sam, I had no idea those books were so valuable."
"They aren't."
"Huh?"
"It's malarkey. Lots of guilds do it. They want to make it appear that their professional secrets are precious, so they make the candidate put up a wad of dough for his reference books. If those things were published in the ordinary way, they'd sell at a reasonable price."
"But that's right, isn't it? As the Worthy High Secretary explained, it wouldn't do for just anybody to have that knowledge."
Sam made a rude noise and pretended to spit. "What difference would it make? Suppose you still had them--you don't have a ship to conn."
"But ..." Max stopped and grinned. "I can't see that it did any good to take them away from me anyhow. I've read them, so I know what's in them."
"Sure you know. Maybe you even remember some of the methods. But you don't have all those columns of figures so you can look up the one you need when you need it. That's what they care about."
"But I do! I read them, I tell you." Max wrinkled his forehead, then began to recite: "'Page 272, Calculated Solutions of the Differential Equation of Motion by the Ricardo Assumption--" He began to reel off a series of seven-place figures. Sam listened in growing surprise, then stopped him.
"Kid, you really remember that? You weren't making it up?"
"Of course not, I _read_ it."
"Well, I'll be a beat up ... Look, you're a page-at-a-glance reader? Is that it?"
"No, not exactly. I'm a pretty fast reader, but I do have to read it. But I don't forget. I never have been able to see how people forget. I can't forget anything."
Sam shook his head wonderingly. "I've been able to forget a lot of things, thank Heaven." He thought for a moment. "Maybe we should forget the other caper and exploit this talent of yours. I can think of angles."
"What do you mean? And what other caper?"
"Hmm ... no, I was right the first time. The idea is to get away from here. And with your funny memory the chances are a whole lot better. Even though you sling the slang pretty well I was worried. Now I'm not."
"Sam, stop talking riddles. What are you figuring on?'
"Okay, kid, I'll lay it on the table." He glanced around, leaned forward, and spoke even more quietly. "We take the money and I spread it around carefully. When the _Asgard_ raises, we're signed on as crewmen."
"As apprentices? We wouldn't even have time for ground school. And besides you're too old to 'prentice."
"Use your head! We don't have enough to pay one apprentice fee, let alone two, in any space guild--and the _Asgard_ isn't signing 'prentices anyhow. We'll be experienced journeymen in one of the guilds, with records to prove it."