Chapter III

It was nearer twenty-five minutes before Drake’s body, upside down, floated gently past one of the reaction buildings. He caught at an edge, righted himself on the fly, and then let himself drift gently down beside them. On the ground he turned on his bootsole gravitators and stood upright and at ease.

He took a deep breath.

“Greetings!” his voice rattled in their helmets, with an obvious attempt at geniality. “Tinker, you skunk, I heard you talking to our friend on the radio. Why didn’t you tell me she was a girl?”

“I always have been a girl, Mr. Drake,” said Siria.

“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” said Drake. “Well, so long, Tinker.”

Tinker looked at his colleague thoughtfully. “You aren’t by any chance in a hurry to get rid of me, are you?”

“Of course not, Tinker. Goodbye.”

The girl said, “Thanks for everything, Tinker. You’ve been a real help. Another hour and we’ll have the new circuits installed, so I guess I won’t be seeing you again. It really is goodbye.”

Tinker thought out loud, “It’s only been seven hours. Maybe I’ll just stick around and--”

“No, no,” said Drake hastily. “Don’t take unnecessary risks, Tinker. Radioactivity’s dangerous stuff.”

“Well,” Tinker looked rather desperately toward the horizon. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Your space ship’s gravity-stabilized, Siria. I’ll just climb into it for a while. I’ll be safe and insulated against radiation, and then--”

“Tinker,” said Drake reproachfully, “we’d love to have you stay. But I started the coffeemaker for you in the spacehouse. You know how unreasonable that gadget is. If you aren’t there in half an hour it will spatter coffee all over the kitchen.”

“Damn it, Drake,” Tinker remonstrated angrily. “I ought to wring your neck.”

The girl was laughing. “Really, Tinker,” she said, “I’ll be perfectly all right here with Mr. Drake. Go ahead before I start worrying about you.”

“Will you drop in for a cup of coffee before you go back to Earth?”

“All right,” Siria promised. “Now go ahead!”

Tinker glared at Drake, but no expression was visible through his partner’s faceplate. It wasn’t like the man to be gallant. From his long winter-evening reminiscences, extremely primitive lovemaking was more his style. Still--Siria was pretty well protected by the radiation field, if nothing else, to say nothing of the lack of atmosphere. It would take a genius even to get a look at her face under the circumstances.

And, Tinker admitted to himself, he _was_ undergoing more radiation exposure than safety considerations could possibly sanction, especially since he had three months more to go on his tour of duty. Likely enough Drake was relying on his massive male personality to make an impression on Siria for some later occasion. “Okay,” Tinker said reluctantly. “But that’s a promise, Siria. See you later.”

Asteroid B was low on the horizon, but by careful manipulation of the bootsole gravitators Tinker could spiral after it. He took a little run to gather speed, cut the gravity and leapt boldly into space.

As he sailed away, spinning in the sedate pace on which he prided himself, he could see Drake and the girl turning toward the circuit sheds once more. He caught a few words of explanation from Siria to the man about the circuits, and then the bulk of Asteroid A came between him and the two and shadowed the radio waves. He knew that by the time they were in line-of-sight again, they would be too far from his helmet radio for their voices to carry.

By carefully timing the amount and direction of gravitator flow Tinker swung around in a spiral toward the spacehouse on Asteroid B. He made his corrections early, and as B ascended above the horizon he zeroed in with error-allowing caution toward the building where he and Drake lived.

He leaned back against his armor and relaxed in the void.

It was a wonderful feeling to float free from the tug of gravity, to sail gently upward while heart and lungs and brain relaxed completely. He stared drowsily at the hard, bright stars....

It was not, however, so wonderful that he could afford to fall asleep, and risk sailing so far past B that he’d never be able to return. He shook himself and kept his eyes open, watching the universe spin around and around while he whirled gently on his own axis.

“That lying skunk!” ranted Tinker. “He just wanted to get me out of the way!”

He stared in bitter fury at the cold and empty coffeemaker, which had _not_ been left turned on! He should have known that the last thing in the universe Drake would ever think of doing was a favor for someone else.

He started the coffee and then surlily seated himself before the TV screen. A filmplay was coming through from Deimos Relay, but he was unable to concentrate on it.

He found himself seeing instead what he imagined to be the face of Siria Cottrell. He really was getting space-happy, letting himself become torn up over a girl whose face he had never even seen!

But it was curiously pleasant.

He glanced at his watch. He’d been gone exactly half an hour. Not more than an hour to wait, at most, before he’d be seeing her again. But he felt uneasy in an inexplicable way. Not so inexplicable, though, he realized. It was the thought of Drake alone with the girl that bothered him. Drake was an unmitigated scoundrel.

Most of the men the Company assigned to lonely outposts like Binary Y-335 were carefully picked volunteers. But there were exceptions, and Drake was one of the really bad ones. An ugly record of convictions for nine crimes. It was amazing that the authorities had accepted Drake’s petition for voluntary psychiatric treatment.

Of course, there was such a thing as pressure on the parole board, Tinker reminded himself, and it was quite possible such pressure had been applied. At any rate, the “voluntary dangerous labor” assignment after the psychiatry had turned out to be the same “high-bonus” job which Tinker had so eagerly volunteered for.

Anyway, even if there had been successful psychiatry, it was down the drain now. Three months on the lonely asteroid with Tinker had opened big cracks in Drake’s facade of adjustment. He had become more and more morose, spiteful, and selfish.

It would have been a difficult enough assignment for even a stable personality. But for Drake it brought to the surface his enormous instinct for selfishness--the world-hatred of the compulsive and rejected man.

Tinker found himself at the window-plate, staring at Asteroid A. But the buildings where Drake and the girl had joined forces were still beyond his range of vision. A few minutes later, however, they came into view and Tinker, no longer even pretending to watch the filmplay, began grimly hanging on to the eyepiece of the big telescope.

He scanned Asteroid A carefully. The streets were occupied--but only with the headless robots, still stalking around on their cryptic errands. The building that housed the great electronic brain looked empty.

But he found them at last.

They seemed to be walking almost arm in arm, in a sort of ungainly waltz. But, though the distorted perspective made it hard to see the pattern of that incredible “dance,” Tinker recognized it for what it was.

Drake was walking toward the girl’s space ship. And Siria, beside him, was bobbing aimlessly as his arm tugged her along. He was forcibly dragging her.

Tinker wasted no time in reproaching himself. He struggled into his space suit and was outside in a matter of seconds. There was a rocket launcher just outside, designed for quick emergency transportation from B to A.

He was facing an emergency now. He stepped into the rocketboots, cut his gravity, and pulled the switch. Almost immediately Asteroid A swelled to the dimensions of a celestial melon, mottled and light-rimmed in the void above him. Swiftly it grew larger, filling the entire viewscreen, becoming a variegated relief map of familiar design.