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stubbornness in the face of what seemed to him a reasonable offer. Dave continued busily to stow away
grilled ham, while considering his position. He cut off another bite. 'My, but this is good,' he remarked, to
break the awkward silence, 'I don't know when I've had anything taste so good-Say!'-
'What?' inquired Magee, looking up, and seeing the concern written on MacKinnon's face.
'This ham-is it synthetic, or is it real meat?'
'Why, it's real. What about it?'
Dave did not answer. He managed to reach the refreshing room before that which he had eaten
departed from him.
Before he left, Magee gave Dave some money with which he could have purchased for him things
that he would need in order to take to the hills. MacKinnon protested, but the Fader cut him short. 'Quit
being a damn fool, Dave. I can't use New American money on the Outside, and you can't stay alive in the
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hills without proper equipment. You lie doggo here for a few days while Al, or Molly, picks up what you
need, and you'll stand a chance-unless you'll change your mind and come with me?'
Dave shook his head at this, and accepted the money.
It was lonely after Magee left. Mother Johnston and Dave were alone in the club, and the empty
chairs reminded him depressingly of the men who had been impressed. He wished that Gramps or the
one-handed man would show up. Even Alec, with his nasty temper, would have been company-he
wondered if Alec had been punished for resisting the draft.
Mother Johnston inveigled him into playing checkers in an attempt to relieve his evident low spirits.
He felt obliged to agree to her gentle conspiracy, but his mind wandered. It was all very well for the
Senior Judge to tell him to seek adventure in interplanetary exploration, but only engineers and
technicians were eligible for such billets. Perhaps he should have gone in for science, or engineering,
instead of literature; then he might now be on Venus, contending against the forces of nature in high
adventure, instead of hiding from uniformed bullies. It wasn't fair. No-he must not kid himself; there was
no room for an expert in literary history in the raw frontier of the planets; that was not human injustice,
that was a hard fact of nature, and he might as well face it.
He thought bitterly of the man whose nose he had broken, and thereby landed himself in Coventry.
Maybe he was an 'upholstered parasite' after all-but the recollection of the phrase brought back the same
unreasoning anger that had gotten him into trouble. He was glad that he had socked that so-and-so!
What right had he to go around sneering and calling people things like that?
He found himself thinking in the same vindictive spirit of his father, although he would have been at a
loss to explain the connection. The connection was not superficially evident, for his father would never
have stooped to name-calling. Instead, he would have offered the sweetest of smiles, and quoted
something nauseating in the way of sweetness-and light. Dave's father was one of the nastiest little tyrants
that ever dominated a household under the guise of loving-kindness. He was of the
more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, this-hurts-me-more-than-it-does-you school, and all his life had invariably
been able to find an altruistic rationalization for always having his own way. Convinced of his own
infallible righteousness, he had never valued his son's point of view on anything, but had dominated him in
everything-always from the highest moralistic motives.
He had had two main bad effects on his son: the boy's natural independence, crushed at home,
rebelled blindly at every sort of discipline, authority, or criticism which he encountered elsewhere and
subconsciously identified with the not-to-be-criticized paternal authority. Secondly, through years of
association Dave imitated his father's most dangerous social vice-that of passing unselfcritical moral
judgments on the actions of others.
When Dave was arrested for breaking a basic custom; to wit, atavistic violence; his father washed his
hands of him with the statement that he had tried his best to 'make a man of him', and could not be
blamed for his son's failure to profit by his instruction.
A faint knock caused them to put away the checker board in a hurry. Mother Johnston paused
before answering. 'That's not our knock,' she considered, 'but it's not loud enough to be the noises. Be
ready to hide.'
MacKinnon waited by the fox hole where he had hidden the night before, while Mother Johnston
went to investigate. He heard her unbar and unlock the upper door, then she called out to him in a low
but urgent voice, 'Dave! Come here, Dave-hurry!'
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