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Updated: May 29, 2025
Hope you birds remember. Then we're back on dehydrates. Hell, except for that weight problem and consequent cost of stuff from Earth, we'd have it made, Out Here. The Big Vacuum ain't so tough no storms in it, even, to tear our bubbs apart. I guess we won't ever have a bigger adventure than finding out for ourselves that we can get along with space."
A thousand miles overhead, out of reach of his sabotaged transmitter, one of those around the Moon tour bubbs, like the unfortunate Far Side, was passing. He heard the program they were broadcasting. A male voice crooned out what must be a new, popular song. He had heard so few new songs. "Serene... Found a queen... And her name is Eileen..."
"I pelief me," nodded Dunnerwurst soberly. "Your advice vill took me." A few moments later he announced that he was ready, and Bob Bubbs stepped out as the first batter. Hans hit Bob with the first ball pitched, and Kilgore, who was umpiring, sent Towser to first. "Vy did you not dotge?" demanded Dunnerwurst, in exasperation. "Any vun vould pelief der ball did not see you coming.
Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of to hell with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertain mainstream of the things he knew best. He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of smelted metal rods tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The sheaves had their own propelling ionic motors. He lazed like a tramp.
Just keep your Archer handy..." The faint, shifting blips in the radar screens was an old story, reminding him that certain things were no better than before, and that some were worse. Somewhere there were other bubbtowns. There were policing space forces, too. But for millions of miles around, this cluster of eight hundred prefabs and the numerous larger bubbs that served them, were all alone.
Early in November, Nelsen collected all available fresh capital, including a second thousand from Paul Hendricks and five hundred from Charlie Reynolds, and sent it in with new orders. That about exhausted their own finances for a long time to come. Seven bubbs, minus most of even their simpler fittings, and five ionics, seemed as much as they could pay for, themselves.
The Kuzaks looked leaner and tougher, now, and there were plenty of present difficulties to worry them. Joe Kuzak hurried out to argue with the miners at the raw metal receiving bins and at the store bubbs. Art stayed to explain the present situation. "Three big loads of supplies were shipped through to us from the Moon," he growled. "We did fine, trading for metal.
They found that masculine guardedness and laziness went well together. They ate themselves full. Like Mitch Storey had once done, they all started hydroponic gardens inside their bubbs. In the pleasant, steamy sun-warmth of those stellene interiors, they bounced back and forth from elastic wall to elastic wall, with gravity temporarily at zero because they had stopped the spin of their bubbs.
"That might be an answer," he said. They plopped where they were, and tried to rest until the orbiting cluster of rings emerged from Earth's shadow into blazing sunshine, again. Then Mitch and Frank returned to their own bubbs to check on the acceleration. It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's drum, would lag. "Hell!" Art Kuzak snapped.
They've got those little ionic drives on their shoulders, to get around with, after we're in orbit. Lots of asteroid hoppers live and ride only in their space suits. Why do they make us get all that other expensive equipment? Space bubbs, full-size ionics, lots of fancy instruments!" "'Cause it isn't legal, otherwise," Mitch Storey pointed out.
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