Free No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) by Clifford D. Simak Page B

felt in my pockets.
    “I haven’t anything to put it in,” I said.
    He cackled at me, hoisting the bottle.
    “Fill up a couple of them pills of yours. Dump out the stuff that’s in them. Won’t do you any good. Likker’s the only thing for a touchy stomach.”
    “Good idea,” I said, grinning at him.
    I pulled three of the capsules apart, spilled out the powders, refilled them with the salts and carefully placed them in my vest pocket. The bag I shoved back across the table.
    “Where do you find this stuff?” I asked.
    Eli wagged a shaky finger.
    “Secret,” he whispered, huskily.
    His eyes, I saw, were blearier than ever. He wobbled even as he sat. But his hand snaked out with what amounted to instinct to cuddle the bottle.
    “Good drinkin’ likker,” he mumbled. “Good for the stomach—”
    His head drooped and rested on the table. The bottle tipped and the little remaining liquor splashed onto the floor.
    “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said to the man behind the bar.
    “Soon as he sobers up,” the man told me, “he’ll light out for Sunward. Been going there for years. Queer old duck. Figure there’s anything to him claiming he’s a couple hundred years old?”
    “Not a chance,” I told him.
    He held a glass up to the light, blew on it, polished it with a cloth until it shone.
    “A bunch of the boys had him yarning good just before you came in. Marty Berg was setting them up.”
    “About this time Marty always sets them up,” I told him. “Election day is getting close.”
    I started to go and then turned back and laid a coin on the bar.
    “When he wakes up give him a drink on me,” I said. “He’ll need one then. I’ll try to catch him again before he hits for Sunward.”
    But I didn’t catch him again.
    Twenty-four hours later they found old Eli’s body in the badlands just west of the city’s port. He had been killed by three vicious knife thrusts. The police said he had been dead twelve or eighteen hours.
    Marty Berg was one of those men who can’t go back to Earth. Just what the trouble was no one knew and no one cared to ask. It might have been any number of things, for Marty’s talents are varied.
    As a ward heeler in the North Wall precinct, he always delivered the vote. The methods he used were never questioned. What he got out of it no one really cared, for New Chicago had not as yet developed civic consciousness.
    When he came into my office I gave him the glad hand, for he was a news source. More than once he’d tipped me off on political shenanigans.
    “What’s the news on Eli?” he asked.
    “None at all,” I told him. “The police are baffled.”
    Marty wagged his head. “Too bad. I hope they catch the guy.”
    “What can I do for you, Marty?”
    “Just a little favor,” said Marty. “I hear you’re going to Earth for a bit of vacation—”
    “In a day or two,” I said. “It’ll be good to see Earth again. A man sort of misses—”
    And there I stopped, remembering about Marty not being able to go back.
    But he didn’t seem to notice.
    “You remember Chesty Lewis? The bird they hooked for forgery?”
    “Sure, I met him a couple of times. The cops back in New York used to run him in every now and then.”
    “He’s out again,” said Marty, “and I’d like to send him a little gift. Just a remembrance from an old pal. I thought maybe you’d take it along and hand it to him. I’d mail it but the mail rates—”
    I could understand that. The mail rates were high.
    Marty hauled a package from his pocket and set it on the desk.
    I picked it up and shook it. “Listen, Marty, you wouldn’t be getting me into trouble, would you?”
    He spread his hands. “Why should I be getting a friend of mine into any trouble? It’s just to save the mailing costs I’m doing this. I’ll tell you what it is. Just one of those sand flasks with different colored sands made into a pretty picture. A picture of a spaceship, this one is. A white ship out in space,