even said that the prevailing odds of two to one in our favor were a steal for us." The admiral coughed. "Ah, naturally, under those circumstances I believed it only sporting to play fair with Commander Kerrick, consequently I doubled the odds for our stake and made it four-to-one. Only sporting. Decency demanded it."
I could only gulp.
Then Old Ironpants was moving out. I came to another brisk salute. When he was gone I sat down weakly in my chair. This was too much. Shane had gone too far. He'd not only talked the admiral into risking all that dough on the outcome, but he'd left the old sourpuss feeling that any odds less than four-to-one in our favor would be absolute cheating!
This was heading for a mess of trouble. Old Ironpants wasn't of the school that lost gracefully. He was strictly die-hard. A loss by our crew would mean more than prestige, it would mean cash, and quite a bit of it. Admirals make a surprisingly modest sum, and five thousand was no small item to Mrs. Ironpants back on Earth.
I thought of that sawed off little ape, Shane, blissfully sitting over the whole damned powder keg.
"Brother," I said aloud, "you've got me, the admiral, yourself and the whole dawgone eighteen hundred men on this battle wagon right out on a nice shaky limb."
But I didn't know the half of it.
DARKNESS had fallen over the Martian space port, and I was snugly, though gloomily, entrenched in my bunk when a space sailor orderly named Barnes came up to me, excited and awfully secretive.
"You gotta step up on deck, Corporal," he whispered. "It's important."
"Is it about the race?" I said disgustedly.
He shook his head in a combination that could mean yes or no.
"It's about Sergeant Shane," he hissed, looking around to make sure no one could hear him.
Against my better judgment, I piled out of my bunk. I went to the deck with him. There he took me off against a deserted bulkhead and spilled the beans.
"A couple of the boys from our ship picked up Sergeant Shane in a back alley to a Martian dive. They've got him on shore, but they don't dare bring him aboard until you've talked sense into him. They think he's been drinking."
A very nasty thought was plucking at the back of my mind. It was almost a premonition.
"Okay," I grated, "I'll go along."
We slipped unobtrusively through the space harbor in a small life cruiser some minutes later. The great gray hulks of the Fleet battle wagons dropped past us every few minutes, and then we were heading down to the space landing docks of the Martian port, passing an array of tramps and freighters and commercial vessels of all types and descriptions. The sight of the freighters made me a little sick.
Finally we moored into the landing platforms and were climbing out onto the docks.
Three sailors whom I recognized as from the Western Hemisphere met us as we tied up. Outlined in the murky darkness behind them were two others, holding a groggy Sergeant Shane erect.
"Here he is, Corporal," one of them said, pushing Shane toward me. Shane half stumbled to where I stood.
"Corky," he grunted thickly, "these damned fools think I'm drunk."
I never saw quite such a mess. Shane's head was cut and his uniform
