Long said, ‘He’ll be here in a while.’
Dora came bustling out of the next room, a small, dark woman with a pinched nose, and hair, just beginning to show touches of gray, combed off the forehead.
‘Hello, Ted. Have you eaten?’
‘Quite well, thanks. I haven’t interrupted you, have I?’
‘Not at all. We finished ages ago. Would you like some coffee?’
‘I think so.’ Ted unslung his canteen and offered it.
‘Oh, goodness, that’s all right. We’ve plenty of water.’ ‘I insist.’
‘Well, then—’
Back into the kitchen she went. Through the swinging door, Long caught a glimpse of dishes sitting in Secoterg, the ‘waterless cleaner that soaks up and absorbs grease and dirt in a twinkling. One ounce of water will rinse eight square feet of dish surface clean as clean. Buy Secoterg. Secoterg just cleans it right, makes your dishes shiny bright, does away with water waste—’
The tune started whining through his mind and Long crushed it with speech. He said, ‘How’s Pete?’
‘Fine, fine. The kid’s in the fourth grade now. You know I don’t get to see him much. Well, sir, when I came back last time, he looked at me and said . . . ’
It went on for a while and wasn’t too bad as bright sayings of bright children as told by dull parents go.
The door signal burped and Mario Rioz came in, frowning and red. Swenson stepped to him quickly. ‘Listen, don’t say anything about shell-snaring. Dora still remembers the time you fingered a Class A shell out of my territory and she’s in one of her moods now.’
‘Who the hell wants to talk about shells?’ Rioz slung off a fur-lined jacket, threw it over the back of the chair, and sat down.
Dora came through the swinging door, viewed the newcomer witha synthetic smile, and said, ‘Hello, Mario. Coffee for you, too?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, reaching automatically for his canteen.
‘Just use some more of my water, Dora,’ said Long quickly. ‘He’ll owe it to me.’
‘Yeah,’ said Rioz.
‘What’s wrong, Mario?’ asked Long.
Rioz said heavily, ‘Go on. Say you told me so. A year ago when Hilder made that speech, you told me so. Say it.’
Long shrugged.
Rioz said, ‘They’ve set up the quota. Fifteen minutes ago the news came out.’
‘Well?’
‘Fifty thousand tons of water per trip.’
‘What?’ yelled Swenson, burning. ‘You can’t get off Mars with fifty thousand!’
‘That’s the figure. It’s a deliberate piece of gutting. No more scavenging.’
Dora came out with the coffee and set it down all around.
‘What’s all this about no more scavenging?’ She sat down very firmly and Swenson looked helpless.
‘It seems,’ said Long, ‘that they’re rationing us at fifty thousand tons and that means we can’t make any more trips.’
‘Well, what of it?’ Dora sipped her coffee and smiled gaily. ‘If you want my opinion, it’s a good thing. It’s time all you Scavengers found yourselves a nice, steady job here on Mars. I mean it. It’s no life to be running all over space—’
‘Please, Dora,’ said Swenson. Rioz came close to a snort.
Dora raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m just giving my opinions.’
Long said, ‘Please feel free to do so. But I would like to say something. Fifty thousand is just a detail. We know that Earth-or t least Hilder’s party-wants to make political capital out of a campaign for water economy, so we’re in a bad hole. We’ve got to get water somehow or they’ll shut us down altogether, right?’
‘Well, sure,’ said Swenson.
‘But the question is how, right?’
‘If it’s only getting water,’ said Rioz in a sudden gush of words, ‘there’s only one thing to do and you know it. If the Grounde s won’t give us water, we’ll take it. The water doesn’t belong to them Just because their fathers and grandfathers were too damned sick-yellow ever to leave their fat planet. Water belongs to people ‘:hereve: ,hey are. We’re people and the water’s ours, too. We have a nght to it.
‘How do you propose taking it?’ asked Long.
‘Easy! They’ve got oceans of water on Earth. ey c n’t post a guard over every square mile. We can sink down on the mght side of the planet any time we want, fill our shells, then get away. How can hey stop us?.’
‘In half a dozen ways, Mario. How do you spot shells m space up to distances of a hundred thousand miles? One thin metal shell in all that space. How? By radar. Do you think there’s no radar n Earth? Do you think that if Earth ever gets the notion we’re engaged m waterleggmg, it won’t be simple for them to set up a radar network to spot ships coming in from space?’
Dora broke in indignantly. ‘I’ll tell you one thmg, Mano Rioz. My husband isn’t going to be part of any raid to get water to keep up his scavenging with.’
