Triton (Trouble on Triton) Read Free Page A

had painted it out. Still, the out-painting followed the letters enough to see it must have been seven ... eight ... ten words long: and the seventh was, probably, earth. The wall to the left was scaly with war posters. “Triton with the Satellite Alliance!” was the most frequent, fragmented injunction. Three, pretty much unmarred, demanded: “What on EARTH have WE
    got to worry about!?!” And another: “Keep Triton Up and Out!” That one should be peeled down pretty soon, by whoever concerned themselves with poster peeling; as, from the scraps and shreds a-dangle, somebody must.
    The underpass was lit either side with cadaverous green light-strips. Bron entered. Those afraid of the u-1 gave their claustrophobic fear of violence here (since statistics said you just wouldn’t find it inside) as their excuse.
    His reflection shimmered, greenly, along the tiles.
    Asphalt ground, grittily, under his sandals.
    An air convection suddenly stung his eyes and tossed paper bits (shreds from more posters) back along the passage.
    A-squint in the dying breeze, he came out in near darkness. The sensory shield was masked here, in this oldest sector of the city. Braces of lights on high posts made the black ceiling blacker still. Snaking tracks converged in gleaming clutches near a lightpost base, then wormed into shadow. A truck chunkered, a hundred yards away. Three people, shoulder to shoulder, crossed an overpass. Bron turned along the plated walkway. A few cinders scattered near the rail. He thought: Here anything may happen; and the only thing my apprehensiveness assures is that very little will ... The footsteps behind only punctured his hearing when a second set, heavier and duller, joined them. He glanced back—because you were supposed to be more suspicious in the u-1.
    A woman in dark slacks and boots, with gold nails and eyes and a short cape that did not cover her breasts, was hurrying after him. Perhaps twenty feet away, she waved at him, hurried faster—
    Behind her, lumbering up into the circle of light from the walkway lamp, was a gorilla of a man. He was filthy.
    He was naked, except for fur strips bound around one muscular arm and one stocky thigh; chains swung from his neck before a furry, sunken chest. His hair was too fouled and matted to tell if it was dyed blue or green.
    The woman was only six feet off when the man—she hadn’t realized he was behind her ...
    ?—overtook her, spun her back by the shoulder and socked her in the jaw. She clutched her face, staggered into the rail and, mostly to avoid the next blow that glanced off her ear, pitched to her knees, catching herself on her hands.
    A-straddle her, the man bellowed, “You leave him—” jabbing at Bron with three, thick fingers, each with a black, metal ring—“alone, you hear? You just leave him alone, sister! Okay, brother—” which apparently meant Bron, though the man didn’t really look away from the top of the woman’s blonde head—“she won’t bother you any more.”
    Bron said: “But she wasn’t—”
    The matted hair swung. His face glowered: the flesh high and to the left of his nose was so scarred, swollen, and dirty, Bron could not tell if the sunken spot glistening within was an eye or open wound. The head shook slowly. “Okay, brother. I did my part. You’re on your own, now ...” Suddenly the man turned and lumbered away, bare feet thudding through the circle of light on the cindery plates. The woman sat back on the walkway, rubbing her chin.
    Bron thought: Sexual encounters are more frequent in the u-1. (Was the man part of some crazed, puritan sect?)
    The woman scowled at Bron; then her eyes, scrunching tighter, moved away.
    Bron asked: “I’m terribly sorry—but are you into prostitution?”
    She looked at him again, sharply, started to say one thing, changed to another, finally settled on, “Oh, Jesus Christ,” then went back to fingering her jaw.
    Bron thought: The Christians aren’t making another