Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/170

170 scalp was a horrible shade of red that was a cross between orange and pink. His clothes—blue trousers and wind-breaker—flapped about his skinny ungainly frame with every motion he made.

A Martian space tar lolling drunkenly at a table looked up at the Captain and a slow grin split his pumpkin-like face.

"Long time since I see,'" [sic] he said jovially. "How has been my friend, the Captain Stinky?"

Captain Ebenezer Scragg glared at the Martian.

"Listen, you overgrown lobster," he cried, in a shrill voice that cracked slightly with rage, "if you call me that name again I'll bust a chair over your gol-danged head. Just because I'm master of garbage scow, don't mean I ain't entitled to some respect. I'm Captain Ebenezer Scragg of the Sweet Pea, and if you've got anything in that blockhead of your'n that you want to discuss with me, why call me by my name and rank."

APTAIN EBENEZER stopped because he was out of breath.

Glaring balefully at the Martian, he was about to turn back to the bar, when a general wave of coarse laughter swept over the saloon.

A drunk in the corner stood up and struck a pose.

"I'm Captain Ebenezer Scragg," he cried, between hiccoughs, "Master of the Sweet Pea, the dirtiest, stinkingest garbage scow between here and Earth."

Captain Ebenezer's face turned as red as his hair.

"Leave her name out of this," he shouted shrilly. "The Sweet Pea don't need any apologies, not to drunken bums like you, anyway. You couldn't get a berth on her the best day of your life, if you ever had one. I wouldn't have you for nothing a month."

The drunk chortled triumphantly.

"You ain't got enough money to get me aboard your scow," he jeered.

Because this statement was perfectly true it struck home to the Captain's most vulnerable spot—his pride.

He knew that not one man in the saloon would accept a berth on his ship. The garbage scows that met the great space liners and removed the accumulation of refuse the liners collected on their three and four week trips, were regarded as beneath the dignity of any respectable space tar.

Captain Ebenezer's contract with the space liners provided that he remove their garbage at pre-arranged meeting places in the void. Occasionally he was able to sign on a few seamen to help him, but more often he had to do the complete job himself. In fact it had been months since he had been able to recruit the remnants of a crew.

T SAVED him money but it doubled his work. And such work! It was humiliating for the Master of the scow to be forced to climb over the refuse in the hold to open the garbage chutes. He could stand that, but when he had to grab a pitch fork and spread the cargo about to keep it from piling up at the chute door, his sensitive, dignity-loving soul wilted.

The fact that he was master of his own, ship duly commissioned and authorized, was ashes in his mouth with the realization on that he was held in a sort of pitying contempt by the rest of the spaceman at the port.

He would have cheerfully cut his tongue out before admitting that he cared for the opinion of other masters and space tars. Still, deep in his tough old heart, he cared very much.

The ribald laughter that was sound-