The problem was that nobody had asked Hiram his opinion, and the fact of the matter was that he relished the notion of being the biggest human being in the galaxy. When they finally took him to the doctor, he dislocated four vertebrae in the poor man’s back, broke both of his legs, and quite literally tore his office apart.

That was the day that he became ManMountain Bates.

They put him in a home for disturbed juveniles. He battered down the brick wall with his bare hands and took off for points unknown, surfacing some five years later on the Inner Frontier. By then he had finally reached his full growth—eight feet seven inches, and close to 575 pounds of burly, rock-hard muscle—and he worked his way through a number of menial jobs before he chucked it all and became a gambler.

He was close to thirty years old the first time that Black Orpheus saw him. He was sitting in a poker game in the back room of a bar on Binder X, surrounded by five rugged miners. He’d been losing pretty heavily, and he was none too happy about it. Finally he glared around the table and announced in a loud, belligerent voice that his luck had just changed and he intended to win the next few hands.

The pot reached six thousand credits on the ensuing hand when Bates finally slammed his cards down on the table. He had a pair of sixes. Two of his opponents had flushes and one had a full house; all tossed their cards into the middle of the table, face down, and opined that they had nothing that could beat him. In a manner of speaking, they were right.

Two more such displays followed, and when Bates had recouped his evening’s losses he took his money and left the game, heading deeper into the Frontier. It made a lasting impression on Black Orpheus.

Their paths crossed once more, about five years later, on Barios IV. Orpheus was attracted by the sounds of a barroom brawl and upon arriving at the scene found that ManMountain Bates had challenged the entire clientele of a sleazy spaceport bar. They were a hard-living, hard-drinking lot, prospectors and cargo hands and traders, but Bates threw them around the barroom as if they were so many toothpicks, laughing all the while in his deep bass. One after another was tossed through windows or into walls, until only Bates and Orpheus remained standing.

“Write that in your goddamned song!” he bellowed happily, tossing enough money on the bar to pay for the damages and walking off into the hazy night.

Orpheus took him at his word and gave him six verses. He also tried to line up a fight between Bates and Skullcracker Murchison, who was the unofficial freehand heavyweight champion of the Inner Frontier, but Murchison did a little checking up and decided he wanted no part of ManMountain Bates.