The reeps arrived at four twenty-two p.m., the fourteenth day out from Earth. The gripper reep, still clutching replacement part X-102-W, slid into a soft elliptical orbit around the Station. The fixer reep closed gently against the personnel hatch grid. Spacesuited crewmen fastened it to the grid by metal lines through the two rings, one at the reep’s top toward the rear and the other at the bottom near the front. The reep pilot pumped the cabin air into the storage tank, adjusted his helmet, and opened the magnetically-sealed clear plastic cockpit dome. A Station crewman helped him out onto the grid, and escorted him inside for a conference with Irv Mendel and Blair.
Mendel greeted him at his office doorway, hand out-thrust. “Welcome aboard. Irv Mendel.” The pilot grinned and took the proffered hand. “Ed Wiley,” he said. He nodded to Blair. “How’s it going, Glenn?”
“Lousy,” Blair told him. “Did you see the strike?”
“Yeah, it’s a nice one, a real boulder. Which section is that?”
“Five,” said Mendel. “Glenn’s cargo is in there, that’s why he’s so peeved.”
“It’s QB’s cargo,” snapped Blair, “not mine.”
Wiley frowned. “Ours? How so?”
Mendel explained, “Your six-months’ goodies are in there.”
“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-an’-gone.”
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, Cargo-master,” 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.