Galactic Medal of Honor

He could have done his additional drinking right here in his mini-apartment. His small autobar would have supplied him with all the ersatz guzzle he could dial. But he didn't want that. He didn't want to be completely alone after even, only five days of patrol. He wanted people around, even though they didn't talk to him, associate with him. He just wanted them around. As a matter of fact, he didn't particularly want companionship, save that of Dian Keramikou. In his present state of mind.

He wanted to suffer in silence.

He had lied to Harry Amanroder, in the Nuevo Mexico. He wasn't particularly short financially. He had put his drinks on the cuff so that he could hold onto enough pseudo-dollar credit to show Dian a really big time. He had planned to take her to the Far-Out Room, located in the biggest hotel in Center City, and blow her to the finest spread possible. No whale steak, no synthetics. The real thing. From hors d'oeuvres to real fruit for dessert.

But now he planned to blow it on more guzzle.

And not in this building, either. There were several dozen bars, nightclubs and restaurants in the high-rise and he had, in his time, been in all of them. But not tonight. Tonight, he wanted to pub crawl, and preferably in the cheapest areas of town. Why, he didn't know, but he felt like slums, or the nearest thing to them the present world had to offer.

One automated bar faded into another. He seldom had more than one drink in any of them. He would sprawl at an empty table, put his Universal Credit Card in the payment slot and dial a tequila, or whatever. By this time he was mixing his drinks and feeling them to the point where he usually had to close one eye to be able to dial.

It was well into the night when the fog rolled out of his brain and he realized that he was zig-zag-ging down the street without remembering the last bar he had been in. He tried to concentrate. Had it been that one where the garish looking girl, or rather woman, had tried to pick him up?

The place with the overly loud, harsh canned music and the overly loud, harsh crowd of drunks? He couldn't re- , member. He had blacked out, somewhere along the line. He was going to have to get to a metro station and take the vacuum tube back to his apartment house. If he passed out on the street and was thrown in the drunk Nick, they'd turn him over to the Space Police when they learned his identity and then he would be in trouble.

And suddenly he was confronted by three men in the uniforms of Space Platform privates. In the Space Service those who manned the heavily armed Space Platforms which orbited not only Earth but Luna, Mars and the colonized satellites as well, were the low men on the totem pole. Of all the elements in the service, theirs was the least glamorous, the most undesirable. In a way, the platforms were something Like the Foreign Legion forts in the Sahara, a couple of centuries earlier. The space cafard incidence was high, particularly in view of the fact that a tour of duty lasted six months. Six months confined to a Space Platform! Most spacemen shuddered at the idea.

But now, here were three of them. And they stood there, blocking the way of Don Mathers. They averaged about his own build and they, too, were somewhat drenched, though not nearly as far gone as Don.

Two of them carried what appeared to be improvised truncheons, the other, the largest of them, had his fists balled.

"What the hell do you want?" Don slurred.

"Everything you've got, you funker," the largest one growled lowly.

"Hand it over, or we take it the hard way for you."

Don tried to rally himself. He said in a belligerent slur, "Look, you three, I'm a One Man Scout pilot, and officer. If you don't clear out, I'll summon the SP and it'll be your ass."

One of the others grinned nastily. "You reach for your transceiver, sir, and I'll bat you over the head with this."

Don Mathers wavered on his feet. Three of them, damn it, and he was drenched to the gills. He backed up against the wall of the building he had been walking along at their approach. He realized that if he'd had good sense he would do what they demanded. Precious little he had on him anyway, and most of it personal rather than being of much value; his transceiver, his class ring, his wrist chronometer, a gold stylo Dian had given him for his birthday a year ago when she still thought she was in love with him. It was the stylo that decided him; he didn't want to give it up.

He put up his hands in a drunken effort to defend himself.

It wasn't actually an age of personal physical violence. Don Mathers couldn't remember having hit anybody since childhood, and early childhood at that. Pugilism was no longer practiced as a sport, nor was wrestling, not to speak of judo or karate. Even football, basketball and hockey had been so modified as to minimize the danger of any of the contestants being hurt. Bullfighting and even auto racing were unknown.