"Oh, fine. In what condition?"
Blair said, "This fat character here won't let me in to find out. The
whole section's at half-pressure by now."
"Then he's right," said Wiley. "I hate to admit it, but he's right.
Double the pressure all at once, you're liable to knock the meteor
right out of the hole. If pressure's going down that slow right now, it
means the meteor's partially plugging the leak."
"And what happens when you guys yank the meteor out? Same difference."
"Not the same," said Mendel. "This way, nobody gets killed."
Blair shrugged angrily.
Wiley said, "Maybe we can work something. Vacuum won't hurt the
goodies, will it?"
"It may explode the cases," said Blair. "That shouldn't do too much
damage. I'm worried about it being flipped outside. The cases'll burst,
and the whole shipment'll be scattered to hell-angone."
Wiley nodded. "We'll try to lower the pressure slow and easy. Have you
cut off the air supply in that section?"
"First thing," said Mendel.
"Good. We'll need two guys on the outside to give us a hand. Do you
want to, Glenn?"
"Damn right," said Blair. He got to his feet. "I'll suit up."
Wiley stopped him at the door. "Don't worry, boy," he said. "Nobody's
going to blame you if it goes wrong."
* * * * *
Blair studied him, then said, "Tell me, Ed. If that shipment doesn't
get out to QB, will it be a very pleasant place to live the next few
months."
Wiley returned his gaze a moment, then shook his head. "No, it won't.
We'll have to hide the razor blades."
"How do you feel now, Ed?" pursued Blair. "Happy in your work, content
with the job and the pay and the living conditions? How are you going
to feel two months from now?"
"I know that, Glenn. Believe me, I know exactly what you mean. Don't
forget, I _come_ from QB. If there's any way at all to fix that strike
and save the cargo, I'll do it."
"What do you figure your chances, Ed?"
"It's hard to say, before we get a closer look. Maybe fifty-fifty."
"If I open the Section Five door and go in there and get that cargo
out, what are the chances of the meteor being knocked out? Fifty-fifty?"
"Less than that, Glenn. You've only got half-pressure in there, you
tell me." Wiley patted his shoulder. "We'll work it out," he said.
"I'm glad to hear it."
* * * * *
Blair left the office and took the elevator down to Section Two and
his cubicle. As he was getting into his suit, there was a knock at the
door. He grunted, and Ricks came in.
The two had been avoiding each other for the last two weeks, Ricks more
obviously than Blair. Whenever one entered a room--mess hall or library
or whatever--the other immediately left. When they passed one another
in a corridor, they looked straight ahead with no acknowledgment.
Ricks now looked truculent and determined. Blair grimaced at the sight
of him and snapped, "All right, Ricks, what is it? I don't have time
for hand-holding right now."
"You're going outside," said Ricks, "to help fix the strike. I want to
go out with you."
"What? Go to hell!"
"You're going to need more than one man out there."
"We'll get an experienced crewman. You've never been outside in vacuum
in your life. This isn't any training course."
"How did you do the first time, Blair? Did you make it?"
"You aren't me, sonny."
"I've been taking vitamins."
"If you want that chip knocked off your shoulder, you better try
somewhere else. I'm liable to knock your head off with it."
"Try it afterwards, Superman. I'm a better man than you are every day
in the week and twice on Sundays. Give me a chance to prove it."
"No."
Ricks grinned crookedly. "Okay, big man," he said. "It's your football,
so you can choose up the sides."
He started toward the doorway and Blair growled, "Hold on a second."
When Ricks turned, he said, "You're a grandstander, Ricks. You knew
there wasn't a chance in a million I'd let you go outside with me, so
it was a nice safe challenge, wasn't it?"
"Then call my bluff!"
Blair nodded. "I'm going to. Get into your suit. But just let me tell
you something first. This isn't a game. If you flub, it counts. You're
going to be living on the Moon for the next two years. That's a small
community; everybody knows everybody else. If you flub, those are going
to be two miserable years for you, sonny. You're going to be the boy
who lost the cargo for QB, and nobody'll let you forget it."
Ricks' face was pale, but his grin sardonic. "All right, Cargomaster,"
he said. "I can handle that job, too. I can be your whipping boy." He
spun around, and out of the cubicle.
Fists clenched tight, Blair glowered at the empty doorway.
* * * * *
Ricks nervously followed Blair and Wiley out through the personnel
hatch and onto the grid outside the Station. His meeting with Wiley
had been a simple exchange of names, with no questions asked and no
explanations given. Apparently, Wiley had no idea he was merely a
passenger on the Station, and not a crew member. Irv Mendel, on the
other hand, had pointedly ignored him. Ricks got the impression that
Mendel and Blair had argued about him, and that Mendel had lost. Blair
himself simply looked grim.
It was the first time Ricks had seen the exterior of the Station. He
was standing now on a grid extending from a semi-conical section which
itself protruded upward from the ball in the middle of the Station.
The ball contained the administrative and recreational rooms of the
Station, and the cone above it contained the radio room, the control
room, and cubicles containing the meteorological equipment of the
weather team.
Standing on the grid, Ricks looked up and out, toward the stars, toward
the vast emptinesses, and all at once he felt microscopic. He was as
small as an ant beneath a redwood tree. Smaller than that, smaller than
an amoeba in the ocean, smaller than a single grain of sand on the
Sahara. He was a weak and tiny speck of fury and indecision, a flea
riding a lily pad down the Mississippi. He could cry out, with all the
strength of his lungs, and it would be no more than a faint peeping in
the bottom of the deepest well of all.
Wiley's calm voice broke into his awe and wonder, crackling tinnily
from the helmet radio: "We'll go on down and take a look at the damage
first. It's the section just to the right of that spoke."
Blair's voice, oddly depersonalized by the radio, said, "Right. You
lead off."
Wiley, calm and sure-footed in his magnet-soled boots, stepped off the
grid onto the curving side of the cone. He marched down it, looking
to Ricks like a man walking calmly down a wall, and thence across the
bulge of the central ball to the spoke. Blair followed him, moving just
as easily and effortlessly, and Ricks came last.
There was no gravity out here. The Station spun beneath them with what
seemed lazy slowness against the distant backdrop of the stars, and the
only gravitic force was the centrifugal action of the Station, trying
lazily to spin them off and out into space. Above them, the gripper
reep arced by in its orbit; the pilot waved.
Ricks gritted his teeth and followed the other two, imitating their
actions. The magnetic boots were tricky things; you had to step high,
or all at once the boot would click back against the Station with a
step only half-completed. And it took a sliding knee-bending movement
to release the boot for another step.
The three men moved in slow Indian file across the rounded bulk of the
spoke, up across the first inner bulge of the rim, and then out on the
rim's top. They stepped carefully over the metal ridge that marked
where, inside the Station, Section Six was separated from Section Five.
Then there was a four-foot drop to the curve of the outer surface of
the rim. If the rim of the Station had been an automobile tire, they
would now have been standing on its side, out on the edge where the
tread begins. The meteor was imbedded in the tread-area itself, below
the curve.
Wiley and Blair stood close to the meteor; Ricks hung back a step,
watching them, moving only when and as they moved. No one had spoken
since they left the grid. Then, over the earphones came an unfamiliar
voice: "How's it look, Ed?"
"Not sure yet, Dan. We're just beginning to look it over."
Ricks looked around, baffled, then realized that Dan was the pilot
in the gripper reep, now hovering a little ways off, circling as the
Station circled, keeping approximately even with the meteor break, the
replacement part awkward in its long arms.
"Here it is, here," said Blair suddenly. He squatted carefully, keeping
both boots firmly in contact with the Station metal, and pointed to a
spot at the jagged intersection of rough meteor rock and frayed bent
metal.
Ricks moved in closer, to see what Blair was pointing at. Sunlight
glinted momentarily from whatever it was.
* * * * *
Wiley crouched down beside Blair, cutting off Ricks' view, as Dan
asked, "What is it?"
It was Wiley who answered. "Little bit of ice here. We've got a slow
leakage. Looks like there's probably a small puncture of the inner
hull, with the meteor itself plugging it most of the way. Little bit of
air gets out, dissipates between the hulls, and a smidgen of it gets
out through here and freezes solid."