Delafield shrugged, suprisingly gentle. "You feel it too, Ross? I'm glad to hear it. I'm not sensitive, thank God, but I know they talk about me. They say I quit the space-going fleet as soon as I had a chance to grab off the port captaincy. They're right; I did. Because I was frightened."
"Frightened? You?" Delafield's ribbons for a dozen heroic rescues gleamed in the light that escaped from the hall.
"Sure, Ross." He flicked the ribbons. "Each one of these means I and my men pulled some people out of a jam they got into because of somebody's damned stupidity or slow reflexes or defective memory. No; I withdraw that The 'Thetis' got stove in because of mechanical failure, but all the rest were human error. There got to be too many for me; I want to enjoy my old age.
"Ready to face that if you become a purser? I can tell you that if you don't like it here you won't be happy on Sunward and you won't like the moons. And you most especially and particularly won't like being a purser. It's the same job you're doing now, but it pays less, offers you a six-by-eight cubicle to work and live in, and gives you nothing resembling a future to aim at. Now if you'll excuse me I'd better get back inside. I've enjoyed our talk."
Ross followed the captain gloomily. Nothing had changed inside; Ross lounged hi the doorway inconspicuously picking up the eye of his bidder. Marconi was gone from the enclosure. Ross looked around hopefully and found his friend in agitated conversation with an unrecognizable but also agitated man at the back of the hall. Ross drifted over. Heads were turning in the front rows. As Ross got within range he heard a couple of phrases. "——in the ship. Mr. Haarland specially asked for you. Please, Mr. Marconi!"
"Oh, hell," Marconi said disgustedly. "Go on. Tell him I'll be there. But how he expects me to take care of things here and——" He trailed off as he caught sight of Ross. "Trouble?" Ross asked.
"Not exactly. The hell with it." Marconi stared indecisively at the auctioneer for a moment. He said obscurely, "Taking your life isn't enough; he wants more. And I thought I'd be able to see Lurline tonight. Excuse me, Ross. I've got to get over to the ship." He hurried out.
Ross looked wonderingly after him, caught the eye of his bidder, and went back to work. By the time the auction was over and dawn was breaking in the west, Oldham Trading had bought nine lots of merchandise: three breathing, five flowering, and one a roll of microfilm. Ross took his prizes to the office where Charles Oldham was waiting, much the better for a few drinks and a long nap.
"How much?" demanded Oldham. Evidently they were both supposed to ignore his hysteria of the night before.
"Fifty-seven thousand," Ross said dully.
"For nine lots? Good man! With any kind of luck at all——" And Oldham babbled on and on. He wanted Ross to stay and view the microfilm projection, stand by for a report from a zoologist and a botanist on the living acquisitions. He pleaded weariness and Oldham became conciliatory to the wonderful young up-and-comer who had bid in the merchandise at a whopping bargain price.
Ross dragged himself from the building, into a cab, and home. Morpsely undressing he lit a cigarette and brooded: well, that was it. What you'd been waiting for since you were a junior apprentice. The starship came, you had the alien prizes hi your hands and you realized they were as tawdry as the cheap gimcracks you export every week to Sunward.
He stared out the window, over Ghost Town, to the Field. The sun was high over the surrounding mountains; he imagined he could pick out the reflected glimmer from the starship a dozen miles away. Marconi at least got to examine the ship. Marconi might be there now; he'd been headed that way when Ross saw him last. And evidently not enjoying it much. Ross wondered vaguely if anybody really enjoyed anything. He stubbed out his cigarette.
As he fell asleep he was remembering what Delafield had told him about the moons and the planet ports. His dreams were of the cities of other planets, and every one of them was populated by aloof Delafields and avaricious Oldhams.
3
"WAKE up, Ross," Marconi was saying, joggling him. "Come on, wake up."
Ross thrust himself up on an elbow and opened his eyes. He said with a tongue the size of his forearm in a dust-lined mouth: "Wha' time is it? Wha' the hell are you doing here, for that matter?"
"It's around noon. You've slept for three hours; you can get up."
"Uh." Ross automatically reached for a cigarette. The smoke got in his eyes and he rubbed them; it dehydrated and seared what little healthy tissue appeared to be left in his mouth. But it woke him up a little. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.
Marconi's hand was involuntarily on his breast pocket again, the one in which he carried Lurline's picture. He said harshly: "You want a job? Topside? Better than purser?" He wasn't meeting Ross's eye. His gaze roved around the apartment and lighted on a coffee maker. He filled it and snapped it on. "Get dressed, will you?" he demanded.
Ross sat up. "What's this all about, Marconi? What do you want, anyway?"
Marconi, for his own reasons, became violently angry. "You're the damnedest question-asker I ever did meet, Ross. I'm trying to do you a favor."
"What favor?" Ross asked suspiciously.
"You'll find out. You've been bellyaching to me long enough about how dull your poor little life is. Well, I'm offering you a chance to do something big and different. And what do you do? You crawfish. Are you interested or aren't you? I told you: It's a space job, and a big one. Bigger than being a purser for Fallon. Bigger than you can imagine."
Ross began to struggle into his clothes, no more than half comprehending, but stimulated by the magic words. He asked, puzzling sleepily over what Marconi had said, "What are you sore about?"
His guess was that Lurline had broken a date—but it seemed to be the wrong time of day for that.
"Nothing," Marconi said grumpily. "Only I have my own life to live." He poured two cups of coffee.
He wouldn't answer questions while they sipped the scalding stuff. But somehow Ross was not surprised when, downstairs, Marconi headed his car along the winding road through Ghost Town that led to the Yards.
Every muscle of Ross's body was stiff and creaky; another six hours of sleep would have been a wonderful thing. But as they drove through the rutted streets of Ghost Town he began to feel alive again. He stared out the window at the flashing ruins, piecing together the things Marconi had said.
"Watch it!" he yelled, and Marconi swerved the car around a tumbled wall. Ross was shaking, but Marconi only drove faster. This was crazy! You didn't race through Ghost Town as though you were on the pleasure parkways around the Great Blue Lake; it wasn't safe. The buildings had to fall over from tune to time—nobody, certainly, bothered to keep them in repair. And nobody bothered to pick up the pieces when they fell, either, until the infrequent road-mending teams made their rounds.
But at last they were out of Ghost Town, on the broad highway from Halsey City to the port. The administration building and car park was just ahead.
It was there that Marconi spoke again. "I'm assuming, Ross, that you weren't snowing me when you said you wanted thrills, chills, and change galore."
"That's not the way I put it. But I wasn't snowing you."
"You'll get them. Come on."
He led Ross across the field to the longliner, past a gaggle of laughing, chattering Sonnies and Mas. He ignored them.
The longliner was a giant of a ship, a blunt torpedo a hundred meters tall. It had no ports—naturally enough; the designers of the ship certainly didn't find any reason for its idiot crew to look out into space, and landings and takeoffs would be remote-controlled. Two hundred years old it was; but its metal was as bright, its edges as sharp, as the newest of the moon freighters at the other end of the hardstand. Two hundred years—a long trip, but an almost unimaginably long distance that trip covered. For the star that spawned it was undoubtedly almost as far away as light would travel in two centuries' time. At 186,000 miles per second, sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour. Ross's imagination gave up the task. It was far.