Just then Tonina came in the door.
"Tonina!" he called. She looked around, saw him, and Sost, and headed toward them. "Yes, it's a good mine… Tonina, sit down. I'd like you to meet Sost. Do you want something to drink?"
"Not right now," she said, joining them at the table. She and Sost looked at each other.
"I've heard the name," she said.
"I get around," said Sost. "I met the boy, here, just outside his holding station. Stupidest twenty-year-old I ever saw; and I told him so. We ended up getting on real well."
"Ah," said Tonina. She relaxed. Hal had noticed before how quick she was to tense up in any unusual situation. Normally she did not relax this quickly. "He's getting brighter every day."
"Don't say?" said Sost, drinking coffee.
"I do say," Tonina said. "He's rating right at the top among the muckers-out and he's only been here a little over a month."
"Six weeks," said Hal.
"I remember you now," Tonina said to Sost, "you used to come in regularly to the old Trid Mine. Nearly two years ago. I got started there. You remember Alf Sumejari, the head cook…"
They talked about people whose names were unknown to Hal. But he did not feel uncomfortable at being left out of the conversation. He sat listening comfortably, and when John Heikkila walked through the entrance a few minutes later he called the team leader over to join them.
"He's doing all right," John told Sost, whom he had evidently met before.
"About time then, isn't it?" said Sost.
"I'll be the judge of that," said John. "Are you going to be coming in here regularly, then?"
"Not on a regular schedule," Sost said. "But I'll be working this territory generally for quite a while. There'll be things to bring me to the Yow Dee."
He pushed his empty coffee mug away from him and stood up. John and Tonina were also getting to their feet and Hal scrambled to his. He had the sudden, sharp feeling that something he had not understood had gone on about him.
"You're leaving right away?" he said to Sost. "I thought we could take a few hours - "
"Got to keep schedule," said Sost. He nodded at John and Tonina. "See you in Port, sometime."
He went out the door. John and Tonina were already moving away in different directions into the room. Hal looked after them for a second, then followed Sost out.
"But when'll I see you again?" he asked Sost as the older man climbed into his truck.
"Any time. Not too long," said Sost.
He powered up the truck on its fans, turned it on its axis and drove out of the staging area. Hal. looked after him for several moments, then turned back to the canteen. He wanted to hear what John and Tonina thought of Sost. But as he got there, John came out and went across toward the office; and a second later Tonina also came out and went toward the bunkhouse.
Hal started to follow her, then read in the set of her back and shoulders that she was not in a mood for company. His steps slowed. He felt a little sadness. Since that first night following his fight she had never really let him within arm's length of her, although in all other ways she had been as warmly friendly as ever.
He watched her go. Walter InTeacher had coached him in the Exotic way of empathy, and he could feel deep in Tonina an old unhappiness that she had long ago given up any hope of conquering. She had simply lived with it until it had reached the point where she was all but unaware that it was still there. Still, he could feel how much of everything she did was directed by that ancient pain and the mechanisms she had developed to bury it. She would not have been willing to be helped with it now, even if Hal had known how to help her; and he did not. All he could do was feel the entombed ache in her and ache in sympathy with it.
By the next day, however, his empathic sense found something else to occupy itself as he rode down in the skip with the rest of the team. He could not miss noticing a difference in all of them toward him, today. But it was not an unfriendly difference. Hal shrugged internally; and, since it seemed to be harmless, he put it out of his mind.
When they got to the vein on which they were currently digging, he fitted himself automatically with a pair of tongs on each glove and turned around to the ledge, only to come within inches of bumping into Will Nanne. Hal had not exchanged a word with the other team leader since the day of his arrival; and he stopped, surprised and wary at seeing him here now, in the area of the Heikkila team.
"Well," said Will. Like Hal and the rest of them at the moment the helmet of his suit was thrown back; and his face was as unsmiling as ever. "You been here nearly two months now, haven't you?"
"About a month and a half, actually," said Hal.
"Time enough," said Will. "I need another torcher on my team. Want to shift over, and I'll train you?"
"Torcher?"
Hal stared at him. He had been having daydreams of the day when John Heikkila might offer him a chance to try working with a torch; and only a small part of that daydream was concerned with the larger percentage of the team's profits that would be coming to him if he became a torcher. The large part had had to do with the dream of being, in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of the other workers, a full-fledged miner.
For a moment he was strongly tempted; and then the whole weight of the friendships he had made with John and the rest of the team rejected the offer, even as he was voicing his incredulity.
"You don't want me?"
"I don't say it twice," Will said. "I've offered you a job. Take it or leave it."
"But you don't like me!" said Hal.
"Didn't. Do now," said Will. "Well, how about it? Work time's counting. I can't stand around here all shift waiting for you to make up your mind. Coming with me, or not?"
Hal took a deep breath.
"I can't," he said. "Thanks anyway. I'm sorry."
"You mean you won't."
"I mean I won't. But thanks for offering me the job - "
A strange thing was happening to Will Nanne's grim face. It was not changing, but laughter was coming out of it. Hal stared at the man, bewildered, and suddenly began to realize that there was merriment all around him. He looked again at Will, at the closed lips and scowling features with the snorts of laughter coming from the long nose. He looked around and saw the rest of his own team in a circle about him, not getting ready for work at all, their helmets all thrown back, and laughing.
John was one of them, standing almost at Hal's right elbow. But when he saw Hal's eyes on him, he sobered in turn and became almost as sour-faced as Will.
"All right, damn it!" he said. "I guess I got to give you a chance to try torching if everybody's going to be coming around here trying to hire you away from the team. Come on, everyone, let's get to work. Time's counting. Better luck next time, Will."
"I expect you'll be over to steal one of my team next," grumped Will; and turning, he went off, still snorting softly to himself.
Hal looked at John and grinned. He was beginning to understand.
"What're you looking so pleased about?" said John. "For two profit points, I'd fire you now and give you no place to go but with Will. How do I know you haven't been talking to him about changing teams, before this, behind my back?"
Hal only grinned more widely.
"All right," John said, turning away. "Let's see how happy you are after a shift of torching. Come on up on the ledge."
Hal followed him up to join the other torchers. They stood facing the wall, in front of about a body's width of rock apiece. John took a position at the left end of the line next to the stope wall.
"Put your helmet on," said John. "No. Put it on, then pick up your torch. Always do it that way. Now…" his voice came filtered through the suit mechanism, "watch me. Don't try to do any torching to start with, just watch how I do it. Don't knock your helmet back until you see me take mine off. When you see me put mine back on, put yours back on - and keep watching at all times. You understand?"