“Okay,” said the pickup ship’s booming voice. “Let’s get at it!” It read off a name. It was the first name recorded. “Waiting for you, now!”
A pause. Then a man in a space-suit clambered out of a donkeyship. He carried a parcel. He went across the relatively flat surface of glittering metal. Magnetic-soled space-boots accounted for the fact of walking. A ladder reached down from the pickup ship. He climbed it. He was inside the larger space-vessel for some minutes. He came out and went leisurely over to the donkeyship from which he’d emerged.
The pickup ship boomed a second name. Another man in a space-suit came out of another donkeyship. He went in the pickup. He came out and went back to his own small craft. Donkeyship by donkeyship, as the ship from Horus called their names, men went to the large and infinitely welcome pickup ship. They carried parcels—small parcels—into it. They came out without them.
The man who’d said his name was Haney went in, swaggering even in his clumsy space-suit and with his magnetic-soled boots clinging as if sticky to the metal under him. Another man—the one who’d answered “Smithers.” Then Dunne answered to his name, and went. He was the last, because he’d arrived last. He turned over a parcel of abyssal crystals to the pickup-ship skipper. They were the reason for everything that happened in the Rings. He made the formal statement that he and Keyes had found a ring-fragment marked such-and-such, but obviously abandoned. They’d painted their own initials and a year on the rock. They were working it.
“Yeah!” said the clerk who took down his statement. “I remember them!” He spoke of the former owners of that fragment. “Doin’ well, they were, when they just didn’t come back.”
Dunne said, “Mail?”
He didn’t expect any, but Keyes should have a letter. He had a sister on Horus and was deeply concerned about her. Not to get a letter on the pickup ship would disturb Keyes. Dunne asked for a second look. There was no letter.
Dunne gave his order for oxygen and supplies. It would be made ready for delivery presently. He went back to his ship. A pause, seemingly for no particular reason. The booming voice of the ship said: “Any more? Any more coming in?”
It was a call for any donkeyship that might still be on the way to Outlook. The call could be picked up an astonishing distance away. But there was no answer. Silence. The voice from the pickup said dryly:
“All right, boys! Come aboard and spend your money!”
Instantly there was activity all around the spaceport’s edge. Men emerged from each of the ships. They headed for the ship from Horus. Now there was no silence. They babbled via their space-phones as exuberantly as before the pickup ship’s arrival. They were starved for conversation with strangers. They were ravenous for experiences they did not have in their ships. There were two men from each of the ships, except Dunne and that of the man named Smithers.
They trooped to the ladder of the supply-ship. They clambered up like small boys let out of school. They chattered like schoolchildren. Those who’d had mail were most exuberant of all. They went into the big cargo-lock which had room for all of them and had been pumped out earlier. As individuals they’d used a smaller, personnel lock. Now All crowded into this big lock, and the outer door closed. Air came in, turning misty from the chill of its own expansion into the vacuum of the lock. Then the inner doors opened and they were in the Ship. They made yapping noises at the sight before them.
All of this was standard. All of it was familiar. Every man had been through it before and each one was anticipating every item which his ordinary life—life in the Rings—did not provide.
There was food spread out on tables, waiting for them. There were white cloths and silver. There were drinkables. There was artificial gravity set at a little less than was customary in donkeyships. With space-suits stripped off, everybody felt lighter. Everything in the pickup ship made for euphoria. Only so. often did pickup ships come to Outlook, and only then could the men who sought and found mines in space live for a little while as their dreams demanded. Without this, they’d forget what they were working for and become less than human. With it, they knew the sensations of children.
Dunne felt all the urge to extravagance of behavior that the other men felt, but his partner Keyes was in a plastic bubble, many hundreds of mist-miles away, waiting for him to come back. He reminded himself. Their rock had been found by another donkeyship team, and the initials and year of its discovery was painted on it. GK-37 was the marking. But that pair of Ring-miners had disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to them. But the fragment went unworked for two solar years. Then Dunne and Keyes found it, and put their initials and the year on it. “DK-39.” Now Keyes stood guard against someone else appropriating it, and waited for Dunne to get back with food and oxygen. If Dunne didn’t come back, Keyes would die, If he were delayed too much, Keyes would die after so many days, hours and minutes. His oxygen would be finished. Dunne had to keep that in mind. He did.
The donkeyship men rushed upon the tables. They gulped down filled glasses. They devoured the food. Donkeyships carried no fresh food—fruits, meat, vegetables. Such things took up too much room, and they’d be impossibly expensive to ship from Horus to the Rings. So the pickup ship provided one banquet. It helped men endure the Rings, and therefore it was profitable to the planetary government of Horus. Very much of the budget for that planet was earned by men who lived in donkey-ships and worked the Rings. The crystals they found made it possible for freighters to ply between star-clusters. They furnished the means by which great passenger-liners went singing through the void.
Dunne ate. He drank. But he did not rejoice. He’d made a grave blunder in failing to account for the absence of Keyes. It would have been sufficient to say that he was dead. It would have caused no. trouble if he claimed to. have murdered Keyes. But he’d aroused suspicion of riches.
Actually, he’d just delivered to the pickup ship a full double handful of crystals. Against their value he’d ordered oxygen and—food and water and mining supplies, all of which had been brought millions of miles from Horus. Now he waited to get started back to. Keyes with them. The others from the Rings made merry. They acted as if made drunk by the mere spaciousness of the pickup ship and by the hydroponic-tank fragrance of the air, and especially by having mail to reread presently and new companions to talk to now.
Everybody talked at once, and at the top of their voices. Everybody made exaggerated gestures. They babbled. They cracked jokes—stale ones, but nobody minded—about gooks. They talked about the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Then they were likely to search with their eyes to make sure that Dunne hadn’t slipped away. They sang songs—several of them at the same time. They stuffed themselves. They were slightly insane. But none of them were unwise enough to boast of the quantity of greasy crystals they’d brought in, nor did anybody let slip the slightest clue to where they worked floating rocks with initials and numerals painted on them.
Only Dunne didn’t talk. He’d made a mistake and even in this festivity he was being watched every second. His problem had become multiplied by a mere slip of the tongue.
Presently a ship’s officer went quietly past Dunne. He beckoned unobtrusively. He moved on. Dunne, after a moment or two, followed him.
The pickup ship’s officer waited beyond the first closed door, He regarded Dunne sharply when he appeared.
“You’re Dunne?”