Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/154

154 back, basking in the sun, burning a few space wrinkles from my harrowed brow. Now I grit my teeth, sitting up to glare balefully at Shane's unlovely red mapmop [sic] and squat, powerful figure.

"Find your own spot," I said. "I was here first."

Sergeant Shane carefully adjusted his immaculate tunic uniform, brushed an imaginary speck from the chevrons on his arm, and smiled tolerantly. I saw that he had even plastered his usually wild thatch of tow hair smooth with water.

"Corporal," he said disapprovingly, "I don't think I need remind you that I am not a loafer. I am a man of initiative, of forceful drive and get-up-ishness. You can see from my appearance that I do not intend to spend my idle hours sleeping in the sun."

"That's fine," I growled, "then go off somewhere and be forceful. But not around here."

"Very well," said Shane, shrugging too indifferently. "Very well, Corporal. If you aren't interested in hearing what I was about to tell you—"

He turned, starting away.

HIS was much too suspicious. When Shane is coy, it usually means he has something up his sleeve beside the hairiest and strongest arm in the Fleet. And when Shane has something up his sleeve, it is generally a good idea to find out about it before he makes a super colossal ass of himself.

"Wait a minute!" I said.

Shane returned.

"What's up?" I demanded. "Why are you turned out like a dress parade? What woolly idea is cavorting about inside that fleece fogged brain of yours?"

Shane started to turn away again. "From the jealous nature of your questions, I can see you aren't inter—"

I climbed to my feet and put a restraining hand on his muscle-bulging shoulder.

"Not so fast," I demanded. "What's eating you?"

"Do you like your job, Corporal?" Shane asked out of a bolt blue sky.

"Huh?"

"Are you satisfied to be a mere Space Marine?" Shane demanded.

My eyes almost dropped out of my head. "What?"

"Or," Shane continued, "would you rather better yourself, be something in this universe?"

"Be what, for example?" I demanded, still uncomprehending.

"A man of wealth, of prestige, of business acumen, for example," Shane recited.

I began to get the idea. It was over four months now since Shane, through sheer staggering luck, risked every last nickle of our joint retirement savings—a thousand dollars, Venusian—on a lifecraft race and turned it into three thousand. I had wondered how long it would take the sawed-off baboon to begin to get the itch to tamper with that small fortune once more.

"Listen," I said, "if you've got ideas on that money of ours, I'll tell you right now to forget it. We've been saving that for years, so that we'll have our space freighting outfit when we finally muster out of the Space Marines."

"Space freighting," Shane said. He pronounced the words distastefully, as if they meant louse exterminating.

"And what," I demanded hotly, "is wrong with space freighting?"

"It's all right," Shane said, "for them as have no foresight, no imagination. For them as want to live out their lives in the ruts of mediocrity."

I looked at him, jaw agape. Those weren't his own words. He didn't even