He suited up, checked his seals, stepped into the airlock, and floated. The hatch closed automatically behind him, but he had to grab a handhold with his right while he spun the locking wheel with his left, or he would have gone spinning away in the other direction. As the air hissed back into its storage tank, he allowed himself a glow of self-satisfaction; he'd been wise to insist on not having artificial gravity under the airlock, so that he could get used to weightlessness before he stepped out onto the surface. Dar's enduring nightmare was a breakdown in the gravity plates.
On the other hand, he wouldn't have to worry about falling. No, strike that—in weightlessness, he was always falling. He just didn't have to worry about the sudden stop at the end. Of course, he was good at landing—he tripped a lot, and had learned how to hit safely, if not softly—but he didn't like it much.
Fess was waiting for him just outside the airlock, one more sharp-angled piece of rock in a surreal landscape of glaring light and total shadow. "Visual inspection, please," Dar requested.
"No leaks in evidence," the robot answered as Dar turned slowly, changing hands on the grab-handle next to the hatch. "All seals appear intact. Good manners are not necessary when dealing with a robot, Dar."
"Yeah, but if I neglect them, I'll get out of the habit of using them, and I'll start being rude to people. Can't afford that, Fess—I need every friend I've got, especially when there are only two hundred fifty-six of us on Maxima. Come on, let's see how the cutter's been doing the last three hours." He clipped his safety lead to the guide wire and pushed off toward the north side.
The robot rock-cutter had produced another forty blocks during the three-hour night.
"Well, production's up to standard." Dar looked back over the cutter's trail. "Just wish we could afford another one."
"That would be desirable, Dar, but it would push the limits of our power output. Slagging requires sixty percent of our reactor's capacity, and the crane and factory require the rest."
"So we could buy a bigger power plant." Dar glanced at the cable running from the crane off to the reactor, dug into the foot of an outcrop a hundred meters from the house. "Then we wouldn't have to depend on the solar-cell screens for the household."
"You should be able to afford one in the not too distant future, Dar."
"How far is 'not too distant'?" Dar growled.
"Only four years now," Lona had answered. "Our ship will come in, Dar. You'll see."
"Yeah, but will it be a tug or a freighter?"
"A freighter." Lona raised a hand as though she were being sworn in. "Cross my heart."
"Okay." Dar reached for her.
"Not yet, naughty." Lona slapped his hand away. "I have work to do first.''
"I take a lot of doing," Dar suggested.
"Braggart. Next thing I know, you'll tell me you do a lot of taking."
"Well, as a matter of fact…"
"Don't try." She pressed a finger over his lips. "Any teacher who really does his job, doesn't qualify as a taker."
"I stopped teaching six years ago."
"Only because the sheriff was after you. You'd open school here, if there were any children."
"That's a vile canard; there are fourteen children."
"Yes, but the oldest is only four."
"Well, I specialized in adult education, anyway. Is it my fault nobody here has less than a B.S.? Except me…"
"A B.A. will do quite well, thank you. Especially since you've learned enough about engineering to qualify for the other bachelor's anyway."
"Yeah, but I was only interested in the bachelor girl."
"So I was a great motivational device." Lona shrugged impatiently. "You're the one who did the learning."
"Yeah, but you did the teaching."
"Me and a small library. You've even learned enough not to be afraid of the reactor."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Dar turned to look out the port at the outcrop where he had just finished burying the power plant. "Intellectually, I know no radiation can get out of that plasma bottle—but emotionally, I still want it as far away from me as I can get it."
"Well, you're only human." Lona came up behind him, slipped her arms under his, and began to trace geometrical figures on his chest.
"Of course, five hundred meters wouldn't do any good if it blew. We'd still be right inside the fireball."
Her hands stilled. "You know it can't blow up, though."
"Yeah, my mind knows it, but my stomach doesn't."
"If anything did go wrong enough to make the plasma bottle collapse, there wouldn't be anything to hold the hydrogen in, so the fusion reaction would stop."
"I know, I know. I just don't like the feeling of living next door to a hydrogen bomb, even if it is in a bottle. I keep thinking about what happened when they broke the seal and let the genie out."
"Well, this is one genie that isn't going anywhere, and in the meantime, it's going to make all your wishes come true."
"Is that why we need a bigger genie?"
"Of course. That's the only way this one can fulfill your more extravagant hopes—by calling in his big brother.'' Her hands began moving again.
Dar held still, trying to let the sensation wash through every inch of himself. "What do you think you're doing—rubbing the lamp?"
"All right, so I have designs on you. I told you I have to leave for Terra tomorrow, didn't I?"
"Yeah, but you promised to make today worthwhile."
"Then carpe diem."
"I thought I'd done enough carping." Dar turned around, reaching out. "And the moment is not what I wanted to seize."
She had, though. He could have sworn she had—she'd led him on into a place where time slowed down, and he could have sworn the climactic moment lasted for an hour. He blew out a long breath and gave his head a shake, remembering.
"May I remind you of the project at hand, Dar?"
"Huh?" He looked up to see Fess's rod-and-canister body silhouetted against stark, jagged rocks, and wrenched himself back into reality and the present. "Just letting my mind wander for a minute."
"I am concerned for your safety while you are operating the crane, Dar."
"Don't worry, I'll turn on the radio."
"There is no real reason for you to assist. I am perfectly capable of building the wall."
"Yeah, but if I do, too, it'll take half the time."
"You are needed to supervise the factory."
"So what's to see? I checked the automatons just before tea break, Fess. They were in fine shape, as always, and the alarm will sound if anything goes wrong."
"Quality control…"
"I'll check the monitor at triple-speed and run the other checks in the morning. Come on—time to throw stones." Dar pushed gently against the rock and glided to the crane, unhitched his safety line while he held onto its grab-handle, hitched onto it, and climbed in.
"You do not yet live in a glass house, Dar," Fess's voice said in his earphones.
"Then I'd better toss rocks while I can. And the house is glass, on the outside, after we get done slagging it. Or at least obsidian—and if it's not, it's too close to tell." He powered up the crane, checked its water level, turned up the hold-down jets, and retracted the anchor. Then he dipped the arm, lifted a block of stone in its tongs, and turned to trundle over to the wall of the house.
Fess was there before him, fitting a block onto the top of the wall, interlocking it into the corner beside it. He stepped back. "Clear, Dar."
"Going in." Dar eased the crane forward and lowered his block into place. Nothing another robot couldn't have done, of course—but one more brain in the crane meant one less they could sell to a company on Terra. It was cheaper for Dar to do the guiding himself, boring as it might be.
As he trundled away, Fess came up with his next block—and so it went, the two of them taking turns for an hour and a half, as the wall grew higher and higher.
Eventually, Fess said, "Midday, Dar."