Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/155

Rh know words like that. A great light began to dawn on me.

"So you want to improve yourself," I said sarcastically.

"Improve my future," Shane corrected me.

"Why?" I demanded. "Who is she?"

Shane flushed. His cauliflower ears went crimson. He glared. "Keep Cleo out of this!" he snapped.

"Cleo, eh?" One in every port. That was Sergeant Shane.

Shane's flush burned deeper. "That is neither here nor there. My proposed investments in Saturnian real estate have nothing to do with Cleo."

"Real estate investments?" I really gasped this time.

"Saturnian real estate," Shane said doggedly. "I have investigated the possibilities. They are enormous."

"Real estate!" I repeated this aghast. "You, a space faring marine, interested in real estate!"

"Millions are being made in it every day, Cork," Shane snapped. "And just because I'm smart enough to fall in on a good deal, you've no reason to act so damned stupid. Why don't you let me explain?"

"Go ahead," I said with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Go ahead, and explain."

Sergeant Shane did exactly that. Explained, while that sinking feeling grew more and more pronounced with every word.

T SEEMED that five days ago—the day after we'd put into this space port—Shane went to a Service Party, put on by the wealthy dames and dolls of the Service Society in the interests of morale and uplift for the men of the F.S.S. Western Hemisphere and other Federation Space Ship crews in the harbor at the time. I recalled that I hadn't gone, in spite of the fact that Shane had tried to talk me into it. Now, as he continued, I wished fervently that I hadn't been obstinate.

Shane met a wealthy dollie there, of course. Cleo Clenoka, the daughter of a financially prominent Martian, Shane said, who had wide real estate investment holdings on Saturn.

"She took a shine to me right off," Shane described the meeting unblushingly, "for which I can't blame her."

It seems that in his attempts to impress this Cleo doll, Shane modestly mentioned the fact that, although on the surface he appeared to be merely a Sergeant in the Federation Space Marines, he was a man of no little wealth, having a bank account of a little better than three thousand salted away. He had added that he intended to go into the space freighting business with this when he left the service.

"She gave me some good ideas, that dame," Shane related. "She told me how it was a shame that I should waste my natural get-up and drive and brains on anything as small fry as space freighting."

I nodded grimly. That's how the change in attitude came about. It seemed that since Cleo's daddy was a big time real estate man, she thought it would be marvelous if Shane could meet him. Maybe something would come of it.

"A good guy, Cleo's father," Shane declared. "High class Martian. He looks and thinks in terms of millions. He put me wise to a lot of angles. And, naturally, he, too, took a shine to me."

"Naturally," I broke in. Shane didn't catch the infinite sarcasm in my voice. He went on.

It seemed that this Clenoka guy was willing to let Shane in on a good thing, a real estate merger that would net Shane a hundred percent on his—I