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All this happened under the sardonic gaze of Glen Tiflin, and before the puzzled eyes of Joe Kuzak and Two-and-Two Baines. A dozen others were hovering near. Nelsen lowered his voice and called, "Nance?" She answered at once. "I'm all right, Frank. A few people to patch. Some beyond that. I'm in the hospital with Doc Forbes..."
Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his Archer. "Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't you ask our host, first?" Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's okay," he said. "The air-restorers are new." But Tiflin's explosive nerves, under strain for a long time, didn't take it. He threw down the unlighted fag.
Tiflin didn't show up at Hendricks' at all that evening, or at his garage job either. Ramos phoned from the garage to confirm that. "And he's not at home," Ramos added. "The boss sent me to check. His Old Man says he doesn't know where Tif is and cares less." "Just leave Tif be," Mitch Storey said softly. "Maybe that's best, at that," old Paul growled.
Their signatures were both small, in contrast to their size. Ramos, fully clad in the Archer, clowned his way forward to write his name with great flourishes, his ball point clutched in a space glove. Tiflin made a fierce, nervous scrawl. Mitch Storey wrote patiently, in big, square letters.
The glinting, transparent ring with the barred white star was passing at a distance. "All is well with you novices?" The enquiring voice was a gruff drawl, mingled with crunching sounds of eating perhaps a candy bar. "No!" Tiflin whispered, pleading. "I'll watch myself!" The United Nations patrol was out, too, farther off. Another, darker bubb, with other markings, passed by, quite close.
Five thousand dollars, minimum per person, is what we're going to need, altogether." Gimp Hines, who always acted as if he expected to get off the Earth, too, had yielded his position inside the Archer to Tiflin, and had hobbled close. "The cost scares a guy who has to go to school, too, so he can pass the tests," he said. "Well, don't worry, Frank.
Always at hand were loaded rifles, because you never knew what kind of space-soured men who might once have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays with their families might be around, even here. Neither Kuzak slept, if the other wasn't awake. They were watching Tiflin, whose bubb rode a little ahead of the others. He was ostracized, more or less.
Hell, though be cavalier it's just a thought." "You damned fool!" Nelsen hissed slowly. It was harder than ever to like Tiflin for anything at all. But he did have that terrible, star-reaching desperation. Nelsen had quite a bit of it, himself. He knew, now. "Get up to Tech, Tif," he said like an order. "If you have a chance, tell my math prof I might be a little late..."
Tiflin only gave him a poisonous glare, as the nine fragile, gleaming rings, the drifting men and the spare drum, orbited on into the Earth's shadow, not nearly as dark as it might have been because the Moon was brilliant. "We'd better rig the parabolic mirrors of the ionics to catch the first sunshine in about forty minutes, so we can start moving out of orbit," Ramos said.
He wasn't even around, anymore, when you beauties got caught. They come and they go." "But you were around, Tiflin!" "Maybe not. Maybe I was twenty million miles off." "Like hell!" Nelsen gritted his teeth, grabbed Tiflin's shoulder, and swung his gloved fist as hard as he could against the thin layer of rubber and wire over Tiflin's stomach. He struck three times. "Damn you!" Nelsen snarled.
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