Bill felt no pain, but the sudden stab triggered the growing emotion that had been rushing through him. Dropping the salutes he fell to his knees in good old peasant-serf style, just like a historical TV, which in fact was just where his obsequious subconscious had dredged up the idea from, and seized the Emperor’s knob-knuckled and liver-spotted hand. “Father to us all!” Bill exulted, and kissed the hand.
Grim-eyed, the bodyguard of generals leaped forward, and death beat sable wings over Bill, but the Emperor smiled as he pulled his hand gently away and wiped the saliva off on Bill’s tunic. A casual flick of his finger restored the bodyguard to position, and he moved on to the gunner, pinned on the remaining medal, and stepped back.
“Cut!” Director Ratt shouted. “Print that, it’s a natural with that dumb hick going through the slobbering act.”
As Bill struggled back to his feet he saw that the Emperor had not returned to the throne but was instead standing in the midst of the milling crowd of actors. The bodyguard had vanished. Bill blinked, bewildered, as a man whipped the Emperor’s crown from his head, popped it into a box, and hurried away with it.
“The brake is jammed,” the gunner said, still saluting with a vibrating arm. “Pull the damn thing down for me. It never works right above shoulder level.”
“But-the Emperor-” Bill said, tugging at the locked arm until the brakes squealed and released.
“An actor-what else? Do you think they have the real Emperor giving out medals to other-ranks? Field grade and higher, I bet. But they put on a bit of an act with him so some poor rube, like you, can get carried away. You were great.”
“Here you are,” a man said, handing them both stamped metal copies of the medals they were wearing and whipping off the originals.
“Places!” the director’s amplified voice boomed. “We got just ten minutes to run through the Empress and the baby kissing with the Aldebranian septuplets for the Fertility Hour. Get those plastic babies out here, and get those damn spectators off the set.”
The heroes were pushed into the corridor and the door slammed and locked behind them.
II
“I’m tired,” the gunner said, “and besides, my burns hurt.” He had had a short circuit during action in the Enlisted Men’s Olde Knocking Shoppe and had set the bed on fire.
“Aw, come on,” Bill insisted. “We have three-day passes before our ship leaves, and we are on Helior, the Imperial Planet! What riches there are to see here, the Hanging Gardens, the Rainbow Fountains, the Jeweled Palaces. You can’t miss them.”
“Just watch me. As soon as I catch up on some sleep it’s back to the Olde Knocking Shoppe for me. If you’re so hot on someone holding your hand while you go sightseeing, take the sergeant.”
“He’s still drunk.”
The infantry sergeant was a solitary drinker who did not believe in cutting comers. Neither did he believe in dilution or in wasting money on fancy packaging. He had used all of his money to bribe a medical orderly and had obtained two carboys of 99 per cent pure grain alcohol, a drum of glucose and saline solution, a hypodermic needle, and a length of rubber tubing. The ethyl-glucose-saline mixture in carboys had been slung from a rafter over his bunk with the tubing leading to the needle plunged into his arm and taped into place as an intravenous drip. Now he was unmoving, well fed, and completely blind-drunk all the time, and if the metered flow were undisturbed he should stay drunk for two and a half years.
Bill put a finishing gloss on his boots and locked the brush into his locker with the rest of his gear. He might be late getting back. it was easy to get lost here on Helior when you didn’t have a Guide. It had taken them almost an entire day to find their way from the studio to their quarters even with the sergeant, a man who knew all about maps, leading the way. As long as they stayed near their own area there was no problem, but Bill had had his fill of the homely pleasures provided for the fighting men. He wanted to see Helior, the real Hehor, the first city of the galaxy. If no one would go with him, he would do it alone.