To turn himself into a close-lipped solitary individual was one way to make sure nobody else would care much to be close to him. The ghosts of Walter, Malachi, and Obadiah had been right. His first imperative was to survive - by any means possible - until he was old enough and strong enough to defend himself against Bleys Ahrens and Dahno.
In any case, whatever method he chose to survive, one thing was sure. From now on, he could not afford the luxury of letting things happen to him. He would have to take control of his life and steer it the way he wanted it to go. To leave it any longer to circumstance and the will of others was a certain invitation to disaster. He had no idea yet how to go about taking such control, but he would learn.
It came to him, riding the strong wave of loneliness and unhappiness in him, that this was evidently what adulthood was meant to be - the taking on of the necessity of doing things he had no idea of how to do, and carrying the responsibility alone because now there was no one else to trust with it. He would have to become, he thought, like an armed ship belonging to no nation, travelling always alone, and running out his weapons at the first sight of any other vessel that ventured close to him.
But he had to do it. Sitting on the soft train seat, soothed by the minute vibrations of the car he was in, as it flew through endless tunnels in the planetary crust of Coby, he drifted off toward sleep, telling himself that he must find out how to do it, some way…
He woke shortly before he got to his destination, and was reasonably alert by the time the car slowed for his stop. He roused himself to get up and step down onto the station platform, and went on into the station, to the area where, as at Halla Station, a single interviewer sat at one of several available desks.
"Papers," said the interviewer as he came up, automatically extending a hand.
Hal made no move to produce his papers.
"Where's the Guest House?" he asked.
The interviewer's arm slowly sank back onto the desk top. He looked at Hal for a long moment, uncertainly.
"Guest House?" he answered at last. "Out the back door and two streets to your right. You'll see the sign."
Hal went toward the door, feeling the eyes of the interviewer following him. The man would have no way of knowing whether or not Hal was a new employee under assignment; and plainly the other was not sure enough of himself to check and find out. Sost's advice had been good.
Hal found the Guest House and walked inside to its lobby, which was identical in every way with the lobby of the Guest House in Halla Station. But there was a short young woman behind the registration counter instead of the elderly man he had encountered at the Guest House at Halla Station. Hal put down his bag and signed in, passing his credit and employment papers over.
"I've been hired by the Yow Dee Mine," he said to her. "Is there some way I can get a ride out to it, if it's some ways to go?"
The Guest House manager had brown hair and a cheerful, acorn-shaped face.
"You won't want to wait in the terminal until all the other hirees are in, and then ride out in Company transportation, will you?" she said. "No, I thought not. You're all to be added to teams on the day shift, so they won't be holding showup until this evening, after dinner. You might as well be comfortable here until then; and our on-duty maintenance worker'll run you out for a small charge."
"Thanks," said Hal, gratefully; and was immediately angry with himself for not succeeding in being more taciturn and unsociable. But it was hard to adjust all at once.
Later, the maintenancer - a girl younger than he was - drove him out to the mine. Its main area was a very large cave-space holding the pit-head, a number of structures built of what looked like concrete, including the offices and the bunkhouse - the maintenancer pointed out and named them for him - clustered around three sides of an open space that looked to be half recreation area, half marshalling yard, in which a number of people were already gathered.
"Looks like they're all ready to start your showup," the maintenancer said, as Hal got down from the small duty truck in which she had run him out. "On the side over at the left there, those six you see, they're the other kips like you."
Hal took his bag and walked over. He was conscious that a number of the men in the crowd of miners standing around - he could see no women - turned to look at him as he came. He made it a point to ignore this and go straight to the six people the maintenancer had pointed out. One of these was a lean, brown-haired, snub-nosed woman in her early twenties, wearing the same sort of hard-finish work jacket and slacks that a number of the men in the watching crowd also wore. She gazed at Hal, frowning a little.
He had barely joined these others when a tall, rawboned miner, at least in his fifties, came over from the watching crowd, took Hal roughly by the elbow and turned him around, so that they were face to face.
"You just in from Halla Station?"
The man had some of the rhythms of someone from one of the Friendly Worlds in his voice, although nothing else about him looked as if he came from the same Splinter Culture that had produced Obadiah.
"Yes," said Hal, looking directly back, almost on a level, into his face. The other released him and went back into the crowd without saying anything more.
There was a stir among those watching and faces turned to the door of what the maintenancer had pointed out as the Management Office. A very erect, thick-stomached man with wavy gray hair and an impatient face came out of the door there and stood at the top of the three steps that led down into the walled area.
"All right, team leaders," he called, his dry, harsh baritone carrying out over the other sounds of the crowd. "Where are you? Who's short?"
The general crowd moved back, leaving four men standing each a little apart from the other. One was the rawboned fifty-year-old who had spoken to Hal. The others were between that age and thirty; one, a lean, dark man in his forties; one who looked like a somewhat younger version of Sost - a burly blond-headed individual in his thirties; and a short, very wide-bodied and powerful-looking individual with a round head and jet-black hair who could have been any age between thirty and sixty.
"All right. Who's got priority for first assignment?" called the man on the steps. "You - Beson, isn't it?"
"Me," said the lean, dark man.
"All right." The man on the steps looked at a piece of printout in his hand. "Tonina Wayle!"
With a satisfied look on her face, the one woman among the kips, who had been continuing to watch Hal, crossed over to Beson. Several of the men from the crowd behind the four team leaders greeted her as if she was an old acquaintance.
"Next? Charlei?" The burly, Sost-like man nodded. "You draw Morgan Amdur. Morgan Amdur, which one are you?"
The man next to Hal stepped forward a little.
"All right," said the burly man, dryly. The man next to Hal crossed over.
"Anyo Yuan. Step out there!"
The man farthest from Hal among the kips took a pace forward.
"John, he's yours."
"All right," said the wide-bodied leader with the black hair. Anyo Yuan, who was evidently as new to this as Hal, hesitated, looking around him uncertainly.
"Go on over to John Heikkila, Yuan," said the man on the step. "Tad Thornhill."
Hal stepped forward.
"Will, he's yours. Thornhill, your leader is Will Nanne - "
"Don't want him!" The words from the tall, rawboned man were loud enough to echo from the walls of the surrounding buildings. Hal felt the sick drop of stomach that comes with the sudden fall of a fast elevator.
Chapter Seven
"Cause or peremptory?" the gray-haired man was demanding.
"I hear he's a trouble-maker." Once more, Will Nanne's voice was painfully clear over all the open area.