Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed

That called for a runoff and the crowd had grown and it seemed that all of New Galveston was out to see them break the tie. Lex had to go first and he went down all out and blacked out for what seemed to be an eternity as he rounded the last pylon, losing a precious tick as he went wide and then recovering to burn up the course, blowing sand silently in the wake of the flashing Zelda , but he knew he'd blown it down there on the far turn, and sure enough, when Billy Bob came in he was a tenth of a second faster and, once again, Lex had to settle for a second.

"I been running hind tit to you all my life," he told Billy Bob. "One of these days I'm gonna get tired of it and beat on you a little."

"Bring your lunch," Billy Bob said. "It'll be a long day's work."

Herding, now, was a separate breed of cat. In herding, it usually went the other way, with Lex's slightly lighter weight adding to his maneuverability and his rapport with his machine giving him another slight edge. The contest was a simple one drawn directly from the work life of a male Texican. It all started way back when the settlers found out that the meacr made better, juicier, more tender steaks than the various breeds of Earth cattle which had been brought out in the original settlement fleet. The meacr was smaller than, say, a whiteface or a Charolais, and he bred like an old Earth rabbit, having twins twice a year, cute little critters with wings which, after a few days, hardened up like a bat's wing and grew to massive length to carry the chunky little body of the wingling up into the auto sport and play and look for insects and small rodents, things which made up his diet until the change, when the wings shrank into two swollen appendages used for flicking bisects and which made the finest, tastiest soup this side of galactic core. In his flying form the meacr was unpredictable. He was as likely to soar a thousand miles as he was to stay put on the range where he belonged, with an owner's brand on his hide, until his wings set and he started to grow and eat a few tons of grass to make him fat, placid and highly edible. While he was in flying form, the meacr needed herding to keep him on his proper range and that was where the airors came into its own. The meacr wingling wasn't fast, but he was tricky. It took some dude to stay with him, herd him back where he belonged. Fortunately, the wingling was gregarious, soaring in groups of six to twenty, and he played follow the leader. Herd the leader and the rest followed.

There weren't that many Texicans that a man could go through life without doing a hitch on the Bojacks and both Billy Bob and Lex had done their year. There were, of course, professional herdsmen who made a lifetimes work of it, but they were, for the most part, loners who loved the big, empty nighttime skies of Texas, lit only by the two small moons, the galaxy itself mist in the southern sky on summer evenings. Some of them were men who had lost out in the competition for the scarce women of Texas. Some of them were just ne'er-do-wells who couldn't hack it in the towns and some just liked it.

Lex had liked it well enough. It was a pleasure to have it all to yourself, all the Bojack country stretching away flat and green to make an inverted bowl of horizon all around you, the meacrs gentle and quiet, making only those soft, sweet humming sounds after they fed enough for the day, the winglings being restless and pesky, the occasional old, grizzled farl sneaking up to cut down a stray for his dinner. But Lex, being the son of Murichon Burns, had been off planet twice, once when he was just thirteen, on a scouting trip into Cassiopeian territory to determine the feasibility of trade routes into the galaxy. And once you've seen space, well, herding winglings becomes just a sport for a Sunday afternoon and the year of enforced service drags and then you begin to know what girls represent and you're given the loot and a new suit and sent into Miss Toni's in Dallas City and after that the Bojacks have lost their charms.

But doing it for sport, herding, is fine; and Lex was ready and eager as he took his turn in the chute and a wingling with a ring on its tail to put life into it was released a few yards in front of him to take to the air like a salt-shot beagle. He was off with a whoop and had Zelda on the wingling's nose in a wink and had the critter going the right way when he made a slip and the wingling zapped a left and then it was full g's getting him again and not much time lost and the circle down there coming up. He forced the frustrated wingling to land and the time was good enough to win his heat.

He leaned on the fence next to Billy Bob. "You, an, been to bed with her?"

"A gentleman don't answer questions like that," Lex said, looking skyward.

"I been into Miss Toni's," Billy Bob said.

"You ain't a man until you have," Lex said.

"Who'd you get when you went?"

"Girl named Pitty."

"Tall, blond?"

"The same."

"Hot damn. I got her, too." "They say she specializes in first-timers," Lex said. "God, what a set," Billy Bob breathed, the memory making him squirm. "Billy Bob Blink next in the chute," the announcer said. Billy Bob was so shook thinking of Miss Pitty

and her set that he let his wangling take a lead and lost three full seconds and then it was over and Lex had his ribbon and a few brews and then he buttoned up the hood and blinked home and in the gathering darkness the skies began to take on their blackness and the lone star of the globular cluster out there in the big lonesome was low and the galaxy hadn't risen yet. Then he began to think and what he thought he didn't like. He thought about the scene at the spaceport when the Texas Queen came down, all the big wigs there to meet her, although the news of the successful trip had been blinkstatted ahead of them. They weren't there to greet the heroes returned from the Empire, but to see the girl Murichon Burns's boy had stolen, right under the noses of the Empire on Polaris Two.

He remembered how she looked, dressed like a decent Texas woman in real cloth, her legs extending out from the short skirt, her hair flowing down over her shoulders, her head held high. And he remembered what she'd said.

"I demand," she said imperiously, "that these ruffians be arrested at once." "Well," said President Andy Gar, "we'll talk about that." "Under the laws of the Empire," she said. "This ain't Empire," the President had said, quickly. "But there must be civilized men here." "Well," said Murichon Burns, "I reckon we're civilized enough to suit us. Civilized enough, at any rate, to

send you back on the meat fleet, but that'll be a wait, ma'am, since it takes time to slaughter and freeze." "Meanwhile, ma'am," Lex said, "why don't you stay at our town house? We got plenty of room." "I would not be caught dead under the same roof with you," she said. "We're sorta short on guest facilities," President Gar said. "And Murichon's house is comfortable. But if

you don't want to be around the boy I reckon we can find something. Might put you up at Miss Toni's place." This brought a general chuckle and roused Gwyn's suspicions. "And who is Miss Toni?" "Well, it's sorta hard to explain," Lex said. "But it's where we, I mean we young ones, go—"

"A whorehouse," Gwyn said. "Not exactly," President Gar said. "We prefer to call it a place of professional entertainment." Miss Toni, who was over sixty, was Gar's cousin.

"We'll put the boy out in the garage," Murichon said.

And that's the way it had been. He saw her, that night, at table. She was displaying some curiosity about the planet and Murichon was answering questions carefully. He'd had her in isolation during the last part of the trip and what she could see in the skies wouldn't tell her much. It would tell her more than he wanted her to know, that Texas was an outplanet, distant from the disc of the galaxy, and relatively near a globular cluster, near enough for the cluster to make one huge star in the nighttime skies. However, after discussing it with the others, they'd decided that those were not enough clues to give away the exact location of the planet. At any rate, the only alternative to risking giving a clue was to keep the Lady on Texas and Murichon wasn't sure the planet could stand such a test. He'd seen her in action against his son. She was, he thought admiringly, quite a woman.