Which was how he came to be on Keepsake, in the Tradertown of Moritat, in Gentry's Emporium, pounding on the long wooden bar with his steel fist and demanding service. Like most bounty hunters, he only touched down on outpost worlds when he wasn't working and like most bounty hunters, he had a pretty regular route that he followed. No one knew how he'd lost his real one, but he showed up on the Frontier one day with a polished steel fist at the end of his left arm, announced that he was the best bounty hunter ever born, foaled, whelped, or hatched, and proceeded to prove that he wasn't too far from wrong. Probably it was the steel hand that did it.

In fact, you didn't officially stop being a tenderfoot or a tourist until the day he added a stanza or two about you to the song.Īnyway, Giles Sans Pitié made quite an impression on him, because he appears in nine different verses, which is an awful lot when you're being the Homer for five hundred worlds. Then she died, and he decided to stay on the Inner Frontier, and he began writing an epic balled about the traders and hunters and outlaws and misfits that he came across. The girl's name was Eurydice, and he followed her out to the stars, and since he had left all his property behind, he had nothing to give her but his music, so he took the name of Black Orpheus and spent most of his days composing love songs and sonnets to her. In fact, rumor had it that he had been an aquaculturist back in the Deluros system before he fell in love. His name wasn't really Orpheus (though he was black). There never was a history written about the Inner Frontier, so Black Orpheus took it upon himself to set one to music. He'll drink a whole gallon while holding his breath,Īnd wherever he goes his companion is Death. With the eye of a hawk and a fist made of steel.

Santiago a myth of the far future