Rude Astronauts by Allen Steele Page B

sitting on his ass, whipped around with his right fist and nailed me square in the nose.
    So much for my application to the Good Samaritan Hall of Fame.
    Things became a bit confused for awhile after that, and I didn’t catch everything that happened. My getting decked touched off a free-for-all of punching and harsh language. Not that anyone was standing up for me, because I didn’t mean shit to most people in the bar; it’s just that the only thing Florida barcrawlers enjoy more on a humid summer night than drinking, dancing, or looking to get laid is fighting. From my dazed perspective, it resembled a feeding frenzy in the water hazard of a miniature golf course, right after you toss some popcorn into the midst of a bunch of bored catfish. Fight? Good! Let’s punch someone!
    Jack gave up on the baseball bat and grabbed the fire extinguisher instead; a few loud shots of carbon dioxide at the ceiling above the crowd cleared the bar in a hurry. He didn’t have to go to that extreme, though; anyone with any sense was getting the hell out of there. The Rude Astronauts had already packed up their instruments and sound equipment and quietly loaded them into their van as fast as possible; they were hired to play, not brawl, and Jack didn’t have chicken-wire erected in front of his stage. In the main ring, the suits had long since lost; they were thrown out the door and although a couple of members of the original fight went out into the parking lot to discuss proper public etiquette with them, I do not believe Miss Manners would have approved of their form of instruction.
    Meanwhile, out in the bleacher-seats of Hell, I was slumped in one of the booths—half-stunned, holding a wad of paper napkins against my snoot, tasting blood running down the back of my mouth. Funny thing about a nosebleed: it’s more embarrassing than painful. I’ve got a glass nose and I’m no stranger to having my face hit. All those teenage years of getting beat up in the schoolyard for being a smartass instead of a jock taught me a few things about controlling nosebleeds, so previous experience told me that all I had to do was sit still, lean my head back, keep something absorbent pressed against my face and breathe through my mouth. It didn’t do anything for all the blood on my shirt, but at least it would save me from getting hosed by Jack’s fire extinguisher.
    The next time I remembered anything clearly, it was when things were calm again. The mob had been cleared from the bar, the place was empty, and somebody had placed a Budweiser tallneck on the table in front of me.
    “Here,” said a voice. “Rinse your mouth out with this.”
    As I looked up, my benefactor settled in the seat on the other side of the booth. It was one of the guys who had originally been in the brawl, although you could barely tell it; he didn’t have a mark on him except for some beer splattered across the front of his cowboy shirt. Not surprising; he was a big guy with a linebacker’s build, the type of person who doesn’t start fights but always finishes them.
    He also looked a bit old to be mixed up in this sort of shit: mid-fifties, with crow’s-feet around his alert blue eyes, close-cropped grey hair, country-style long sideburns framing a square jaw. A pro. An old-time spacer. Hang around the Cape long enough and you can always tell the type.
    Yet he also looked vaguely familiar.
    Fuck it. “Thanks,” I said as I picked up the bottle, took a long drink and swirled beer around inside my mouth. I glanced around; Jack was looking the other way for the moment, so I spit it out onto the bloody, booze-drenched floor. The place was a mess already, and it got the clotted-blood taste out of my mouth. The guy on the other side of the table smiled, but didn’t make a federal case out of my slobbish behavior. He had seen worse.
    “Just wanted to tell you I’m sorry that you got hurt,” he said. His voice had a soft, southern gentleman’s lilt to it: Colonel