Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

He looked it over. “Okay, so you’ve been to a martial-arts school. That still doesn’t mean that you can cope with some big bruiser over a hundred kilos heavier and a head taller than you are. Don’t waste my time, girlie; you couldn’t even arrest me.”

I went over his desk, then turkey-walked him to the door and turned him loose before anyone outside could see. Even his assistant did not see itÄshe most carefully did not see it.

“There,” I said, “that’s how I do it without hurting anyone. But I want to be tested against your biggest male master-at-arms. I’ll break his arm. Unless you tell me to break his neck.”

“You grabbed me when I wasn’t looking!”

“Of course I did. That’s how to handle a nasty drunk. But you’re looking now, so let’s run through it again. Are you ready? This time I might have to hurt you a little but not much. I won’t break any bones.”

“Stay where you are! This is ridiculous. We don’t hire masters-atarms merely because they’ve been trained in some Oriental tricks; we hire big men, men so big they carry authority just by their size. They don’t have to fight.”

“Okay,” I said. “Hire me as a plainclothes cop. Put me into an evening dress; call me a dance hostess. When somebody about my size and hopped up on sleet pokes your big cop in his solar plexus and he goes down, I stop pretending to be a lady and go in and rescue him.

“Our masters-at-arms don’t need to be protected.”

“Maybe. A really big man is usually slow and clumsy. He hardly ever knows much about fighting because he’s never really had to fight. He’s okay to keep order at a card party. Or to handle one drunk. But suppose the Captain really needs help. A riot. A mutiny. Then you need someone who can fight. Me.”

“Leave your application with my assistant. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

I went home and thought about where else I could lookÄor should I go to Texas? I had made the same silly, unpardonable mistake with Mr. Fawcett that I had made with Brian. . . and Boss would have been ashamed of me. Instead of picking up his challenge I should have insisted on a fair testÄbut I should never have laid a finger on the man I was asking to hire me. Stupid, Friday, stupid!

It was not losing that job that bothered me; it was losing any chance of getting a spaceside job with HyperSpace Lines. I was going to have to have a job pretty soon to accomplish the sacred duty of seeing to it that Friday eats (let’s face it; I eat like a pig) but it didn’t have to be this job. I had decided to ship out with HyperSpace because one voyage with them would let me size up more than half of the colonized planets in explored space.

While I had made up my mind to migrate as Boss had advised, the idea of picking a planet solely from brochures written by advertising copywritersÄwith no return-and-exchange privilegeÄbothered me. I wanted to shop first.

For example: Eden has received more favorable publicity than any other colony in the sky. Hearken to its virtues: A climate much like Southern California over most of its land mass, no dangerous predators, no noxious insects, surface gravity 9 percent less than Earth, oxygen content of air 11 percent higher, metabolic environment compatible with Terran life and soil so rich that two or three bumper crops a year are routine. Scenery delightful no matter where you look. Population today just under ten million.

So what’s the catch? I found out one evening in Luna City through letting a ship’s officer pick me up and take me to dinner. The company placed a high price on Eden from the time it was discovered and touted it as the perfect retirement home. And it is. After the pioneer party had prepared it, nine-tenths of the people who moved there were elderly and wealthy.

The government is a democratic republic but not one like the California Confederacy. To be eligible to vote a person must be seventy Terran years old and a taxpayer (i.e., landowner). Residents from ages twenty to thirty perform public service, and if you think that means waiting on the elderly hand and foot you are utterly right, but it includes also anything else unpleasant that needs to be