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"And you crept in quietly. Swell to see you." Sitting showered and in fresh clothes on Frank Nelsen's sundeck, any changes in Two-and-Two Baines were less evident than one might have supposed. His eyes had a much surer, farther look. Otherwise he was still the same large hulk with much the same lugubrious humor. "Mercury's okay, Frankie," he said.
"But you still look as though you needed some breakfast, Frank." He grinned. "Later. Let's go to see Paul, first. A big day for him because of Ramos. Paul is getting feeble, I suppose?" Nelsen's face had sobered. "Not so you could notice it much, Frank," Nance answered. "There's a new therapy another side of What's Coming, I guess..." They walked the few blocks.
You should shleep, baby greenhorns...!" A large man with shovel teeth ambled over. Frank managed half to rise. He met the blow and gave some of it back. Ramos was doing likewise, gamely. Then Nelsen's head zeroed out again in a pyrotechnic burst... He awoke to almost absolute silence, and to the turning of the whole universe around him.
"Also one for you, Nelsen. They just came ordinarily I wouldn't deliver them till tomorrow morning. But you see how it is." A long, white envelope was in Frank Nelsen's hands. In its upper left-hand corner was engraved: UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE RECRUITING SECTION WASHINGTON, D.C. "Jeez, Frankie Charlie you made it open 'em, quick!" Two-and-Two said. Frank was about to do so.
While Nelsen and Ramos were trying to untangle the mess, visible specks appeared in the distance. They fired at them. Then something slammed hard into the fleshy part of Nelsen's hip, penetrating his armor, and passing on out, again. The sealing gum in the Archer's skin worked effectively on the needle-like punctures, but the knockout drug had been delivered.
Tell me how it really is in the Belt. You simply don't realize how much " Nance Codiss' missive rattled along, and the scrawled words got to be like small, happy bells inside Nelsen's skull. His crooked grin came out; he unpacked the sweater creylon wool, very warm, bright red, a bit crude in workmanship here and there but imagine a girl bothering, these days!
But now, to a lone man down there, they would be bleak plains stretching to a disconcertingly near horizon. Frank Nelsen's view was one of fascination, behind which was the chilly thought: This is my choice; here is where I will have to live for a short while that can seem ages. Space looks tame, now. Can I make it all right? Worse how about Lester? Frank looked around him.
The passenger-hostess brought him to Nelsen's prefab. He was a grave little guy, five years old. He was solemn, polite, frightened, tall for his age funny how corn and kids grew at almost zero-gravity. The boy handed Nelsen a letter. "From my father and mother, sir," he said. Nelsen read the typed missive. "Dear Frank: The rumor has come that you are going home.
After Nelsen's arrival, his memory of the interval of acute emergency could have been broken down into a series of pictures, in which he was often active. First, the wreckage, which he helped to pick up, like any of the others. Pallastown had been like froth on a stone, a castle on a floating, golden crag.
Frank Nelsen's view of empire-building on the Moon was brief, all encompassing, and far too sketchy to be very satisfying, as Rodan turned about in his universal-gimbaled pilot seat spiralled his battered rocket down backwards, with the small nuclear jets firing forward in jerky, tooth-cracking bursts, to check speed further.
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