"Tough luck."
"Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's what you'd call it. Tough luck."
"You're going to take off anyway, Captain?"
"Sure," said Kroll quietly, looking at the sky. "Sure."
"How's the protective computator on board your ship?"
"Not so hot. Bad, in fact. It might conk out before we get half way
through the asteroids."
"That's not good," said Nibley.
"It's lousy. I feel sick. I need a drink. I wish I was dead. I wish
we'd never started this damned business of being damned pioneers. My
family's up there!" He jerked his hand half way to Jupiter, violently.
He settled down and tried to light another cigarette. No go. He threw
it down after the other.
"Can't get through the asteroids without an asteroid computator to
protect you, without that old radar set-up, captain," said Nibley,
blinking wetly. He shuffled his small feet around in the red dust.
"We had an auxiliary computator on that repair ship coming from Earth,"
said Kroll, standing there. "And it had to crash."
"The Martians shoot it down, you think?"
"Sure. They don't like us going up to Jupiter. They got claims there,
too. They'd like to see our colony die out. Best way to kill a colony
is starve the colony. Starve the people. That means my family and lots
of families. Then when you starve out the families the Martians can
step in and take over, damn their filthy souls!"
* * * * *
Kroll fell silent. Nibley shifted around. He walked around in front of
Kroll so Kroll would see him. "Captain?"
Kroll didn't even look at him.