Outside the laboratories Roi met Wenda.
Her thoughts were concentrated pleasure. ‘I’m glad you’re back.’
Roi’s thoughts were pleasurable too. It was very restful to make clean mental contact with a friend.
The Martian Way
From the doorway of the short corridor between the only two rooms in the travel-head of the spaceship, Mario Esteban Rioz watched sourly as Ted Long adjusted the video dials painstakingly. Long tried a touch clockwise, then a touch counter. The picture was lousy.
Rioz knew it would stay lousy. They were too far from Earth and at a bad position facing the ,Sun. But then’ Long would not be expected to know that. Rioz remained standing in the doorway for an additional moment, head bent to clear the upper lintel, body turned half sidewise to fit the narrow opening. Then he jerked into the galley like a cork popping out of a bottle.
‘What are you after?’ he asked.
‘I thought I’d get Hilder,’ said Long.
Rioz propped his rump on the corner of a table shelf. He lifted a conical can of milk from the companion shelf just above his head. Its point popped under pressure. He swirled it gently as he waited for it to warm.
‘What for?’ he said. He upended the cone and sucked noisily.
‘Thought I’d listen.’
‘I think it’s a waste of power.’
Long looked up, frowning. ‘It’s customary to allow free use of personal video sets.’
‘Within reason,’ retorted Rioz.
Their eyes met challengingly. Rioz had the rangy body, the gaunt, cheek-sunken face that was almost the hallmark of the Martian Scavenger, those Spacers who patiently haunted the space routes between Earth and Mars. Pale blue eyes were set keenly in the brown, lined face which, in turn, stood darkly out against the white surrounding synthofur that lined the up-turned collar of his leathtic space jacket.
Long was altogether paler and softer. He bore some of the marks of the Grounder, although no second-generation Martian could be a Grounder in the sense that Earthmen were. His own collar was thrown back and his dark brown hair freely exposed.
‘What do you call within reason?’ demanded Long.
Rioz’s thin lips grew thinner. He said, ‘Considering that we’re not even going to make expenses this trip, the way it looks, any power drain at all is outside reason.’
Long said, ‘If we’re losing money, hadn’t you better get back to your post? It’s your watch.’
Rioz grunted and ran a thumb and forefinger over the stubble on his chin. He got up and trudged to the door, his soft, heavy boots muting the sound of his steps. He paused to look at the thermostat, then turned with a flare of fury.
‘I thought it was hot. Where do you think you are?’
Long said, ‘Forty degrees isn’t excessive.’
‘For you it isn’t, maybe. But this is space, not a heated office at the iron mines.’ Rioz swung the thermostat control down to minimum with a quick thumb movement. ‘Sun’s warm enough.’
‘The galley isn’t on Sunside.’
‘It’ll percolate through, damn it.’
Rioz stepped through the door and Long stared after him for a long moment, then turned back to the video. He did not tum up the thermostat.
The picture was still flickering badly, but it would have to do. Long folded a chair down out of the wall. He leaned forward waiting through the formal announcement, the momentary pause before the slow dissolution of the curtain, the spotlight picking out the well-known bearded figure which grew as it was brought forward until it filled the screen.
The voice, impressive even through the flutings and croakings induced by the electron storms of twenty millions of miles, began:
‘Friends! My fellow citizens of Earth . . .
2
Rioz’s eye caught the flash of the radio signal as he stepped into the pilot room. For one moment, the palms of his hands grew clammy when it seemed to him that it was a radar pip; but that was only his guilt speaking. He should not have left the pilot room while on duty theoretically, though all Scavengers did it. Still, it was the standard nightmare, this business of a strike turning up during just those five minutes when one knocked off for a quick coffee because it seemed certain that space was clear. And the nightmare had been known to happen, too.
Rioz threw in the multi-scanner.Jt was a waste of power, but while he was thinking about it, he might as well make sure.
Space was clear except for the far-distant echoes from the neighboring ships on the scavenging line.
He hooked up the radio circuit, and the blond, long-nosed head of Richard Swenson, copilot of the next ship on the Marsward side, filled it.
‘Hey, Mario,’ said Swenson.
‘Hi. What’s new?’
There was a second and a fraction of pause between that and Swenson’s next comment, since the speed of electromagnetic radiation is not infinite.
‘What a day I’ve had.’
‘Something happened?’ Rioz asked. ‘I had a strike.’
‘Well, good.’
