“Mine!” McDougal called out.
“I got it!”
“All mine!”
I was around third by now. Sam was trotting around first, heading for second base. Suddenly Hornsby and all the others seemed to freeze in their tracks. McDougal threw her arms over her head. Arrant stumbled and fell to his knees. Nostrum yelped so loud I thought someone had put a match to his backside.
The sun, the blazing, dazzling, glorious sun was shining through the habitat window like a zillion-megawatt spotlight. The whole White Sox infield was blinded by the glare. Sam’s pop-up was coming down now, just short of second base. The kid in center field made a belated dash in for it, but the ball hit the grass after I had crossed the plate with the tying run.
And Sam was racing madly for third, his little arms pumping, stumpy legs churning, his mouth wide open sucking air, his eyes even wider.
The whole Sox infield was still staggering around, seeing sunspots in their eyes. The center fielder had the ball in his hands, but nobody to throw it to. His face flashed surprise, then consternation. Then he did the only thing he could—he started running toward home.
It was a foot race. The youngster was faster than Sam, but Sam was already around third and roaring home. The kid cut across the infield and dived at Sam just as Sam launched himself into a hook slide while the Sox infield stood around blinking and groping.
It was close, but Sam’s left foot neatly hooked my cap and carried it along for several feet while the teenager flopped on his belly so hard that the ball bounced out of his outstretched hand.
We won, 15-14. The crowd went, as they say, wild. There weren’t that many of them, but they whooped and yelled and danced little jigs and jags all across the field. I rushed over and picked Sam up off the grass. The leg of his slacks was ripped from the knee down and green with grass stain, but he was grinning like a gap-toothed Jack-o’-lantern.
“We won! We won!” Sam danced up and down.
I went over to the kid center fielder and helped him to his feet. “Great play, kid,” I told him. “Terrific hustle.”
He grinned, too, a little weakly.
Hours later, Sam and I were having a drink at the patio of Pete’s Tavern, just off the courthouse square. We had both cleaned up after the game and the perfunctory Zoning Board meeting—held right there at the open lot—that approved my proposal.
“You must be the luckiest guy in the solar system,” I said to him, between sips on my cranberry juice.
Sam was sipping something more potent. He gave me a sly look. “Chance favors the prepared mind, Chris, old pal.”
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you think I was doing with my faithful pocket whiz-bang just before I came up to bat?” he asked.
I had forgotten about that. Before I could think of an answer, Sam told me, “I was calculating the precise time when the sun would shine through the habitat window, old Straight Arrow. That’s why I was trying to hit a pop-up.”
“You deliberately—” I couldn’t believe it.
“I had to get you home with the tying run, didn’t i? I’m no slugger; I have to use my smarts.” Sam tapped his temple.
I didn’t believe it. “Sam, nobody can deliberately hit a pop-up. Not deliberately.”
He screwed up his face a little. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. I figure you’ve got only one chance in three to get it right.”
“One chance in three,” I echoed. He had swung and missed twice, I remembered.
“So,” Sam finished his drink and put it down on the table in front of him, “you’ve got your playground, in perpetuity.”
“Thanks to you, Sam.”
He shrugged. “I guess we’re kind of partners, huh?”
“I guess so.”
He stuck his hand out across the little table. I took it and we shook hands. But even as we were doing that, Sam was looking past my shoulder. He broke into a big grin and scrambled to his feet.
I turned in my chair. Bonnie McDougal was coming along the walk, looking coolly elegant in a white sheath dress decorated with gold thread.
“You know,” she said as she came up to our table, “my fellow Zoning Board members might take our having dinner together as an inappropriate act.”
Holding a chair for her, Sam said innocently, “But I have dinner every evening.”
“Inappropriate for me, Sam,” she said as she sat down.
I was wondering when he’d had the chance to invite her to dinner.
“But the vote’s over and done with,” Sam said, returning to his chair. “This isn’t a payoff. We won the ball game, fair and square.”
“You won,” Bonnie said, smiling.
Sam grinned hugely and tapped me on the shoulder. “The gold dust twins, Chris and me. Partners.”
I grinned back at him. “Partners.”
“And the amusement center won’t interfere with the playground at all,” Sam said.
“Amusement center?” Bonnie and I both asked.
“It’ll be way up above the playground,” Sam said genially. “It’ll start roughly one hundred fifty-two point four meters above the grass and go up to the habitat’s centerline. You’ll hardly notice the support piers.”
“Sup … support piers?” I sputtered.
“Roughly one hundred fifty-two point four meters?” Bonnie asked, with a sardonic smile.
“That’ll give me almost eighteen hundred and forty-eight meters to build in,” Sam said, pulling out his pocket computer.
“Build? Build what?”
“Our entertainment center, partner.” His fingers tapping furiously on the computer’s tiny keypad, Sam muttered, “Figuring four meters per floor, we can put in—wow! That’s enormous!”
“But, Sam, you can’t build over the park!”
“Why not? It won’t hurt anything. And it’ll protect the kids from getting the sun in their eyes.” He laughed heartily.
I sank back in my chair.
“You’ll get half the earnings, partner. Ought to be able to help a lot of kids with that kind of income.”
Bonnie’s smile vanished. “Sam, you can’t build over the playground. It’s—”
“Sure I can,” he countered. “There’s nothing in your zoning regulations that forbids it.”
“There will be tomorrow!” she snapped.
“Yes, but I’ve already registered my plan with your computer. You can’t apply a new regulation to a preexisting plan. I’m grandfathered in.”
“Sam, you … that’s … of all…” She ran out of words.
I looked him in his shifty eyes. “It won’t affect the playground?”
Sam raised his right hand solemnly. “I swear it won’t. Honest injun. Hope to die. The support piers will be at the corners of the field. The building will shade the playground, that’s all.”
Bonnie was still looking daggers at him.
Sam smiled at her. “The top floor of the complex, up near the centerline, will be in microgravity. Not zero-gee, exactly, but so close you’ll never tell the difference.”
“Never!” she snapped. “You’ll never get me up there. Never in a million years.”
Sam sighed. “Never?” he asked, in a small, forlorn voice. I swear there was a tear in the comer of his left eye.
“Never in a million years,” Bonnie repeated. Less vehemently than a moment before.
“Well,” he said softly, “at least we can have this one dinner together.”
With a sad little smile, Sam got to his feet again and held Bonnie’s chair as she stood.
As they walked away I heard Sam ask, “Have you ever slept on a waterbed?”
“Well, yes,” Bonnie replied. “As a matter of fact, that’s what I have in my home.”
I doubted that it would take Sam a million years.
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