Unto My Manifold Dooms

'I mean exactly what I say. When I send in the weekly report tomorrow I am going to give you a negative efficiency mark. This will go on your record. It is not good, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, a lot of men have had them. The importance of the rating is double—to drive home the importance of regulations to you and to be sure you do not endanger anyone else's life. If you make one more blunder I send for your replacement.'

'Have a heart, Cap'n, it wasn't all that bad! No one was hurt. I promise nothing like it will happen again. I'll try doubly hard if you don't report this.'

'You will try doubly hard because I do report it. If I had any brains I would have sent in the first report when you didn't check the bleed valve on Robson's suit. If I had done that this would be your second mark and you would be out—which is where you belong. I don't think you have it in you to be a good spacer.'

He turned and walked away, as far as he could in the limited confines of the dome. Sonny stared after him, chewing his lip.

'I am hungry,' Arkady said, walking across the dome and looking into the pot that was simmering slowly on the electric stove. 'The stew smells as good as ever. Anyone joining me?'

'A bowl for me, if you will, Arkady," Robson said, trying with slight success to keep a natural tone into his voice.

'Your heroic treatment seems to have worked,' Robson said looking out of the port to see if Sonny and Arkady were returning yet. 'Over two weeks now and your problem child has been good as gold, serious as a clam and atten­tive to his duty.'

'Not as serious as that. He is starting with the jokes again.' Captain Hegg stretched his long fingers, cramped from labouring the keys of the minityper as he wrote up his report. 'He must take things seriously, all the time.'

'I think that you are worrying without cause. You know that it is possible for a man to have a sense of humour and still to be serious about his work. Good lord, you never seem to complain about my jokes, except that you don't think them funny.'

'A very different thing, professor. No matter how you are feeling you always do your work the same way, cor­rectly and methodically.'

'Some people use the term "old-maidish" for that.'

'Perhaps on Earth, where there are very few critical mistakes to be made. Out here it is essential to survival. A man must have it naturally, as you do, or force himself to learn it. Some never learn it and find jobs on earth. I would sleep much better if our mineralogist were there with them.'

'Speak of the devil. They're on their way back now, lug­ging a great ruddy trunk between them. I hope you filled the shower tank.'

'Of course! It's on my roster ' He caught Robson's eye and forced himself to smile in return, though he did not consider this sort of joke to be in very good taste.

The shower thundered and roared on the other side of the bulkhead. Hegg eyed the patch where they had drilled the hole and made a mental note to change it in the morn­ing; the continual pressure changes could not be doing the flexible material any good. He wished, not for the first time, that their weight allowance had allowed for some metal-working tools. The sound of the shower stopped and the inner lock opened; the two men burst into the dome cheering and swinging the heavy ~ase between them.

'So pure they won't have to bother to refine it!' Arkady shouted.

'The mother lode, the bonanza, the richest strike in the known history of man—no, in the history of the galaxy!' Sonny struck a noble pose, one foot on the case, arms flung theatrically wide.

'I gather you have found a new deposit of ore,' Robson observed dryly.

'Did you check with the sniff ir before you bled in the air?'

'Of course, Cap'n, old watchdog!' Sonny was so lost in enthusiasm that he had the temerity to slap the captain on one massive shoulder and never noticed the sudden nar­rowing of his eyes. 'As of this very moment you can chalk up this expedition as a howling success!'

'It will be three months before the ship is here to take us off. Plenty of work yet. . . .'

'Paperwork and tedium, Cap me lad! The purpose of this trip was to see if rich enough deposits of titanium, be­ryllium or sodium could be found in great enough concen­tration to justify the installation of robot mining equip­ment, since it is impossible to biing in enough oxygen for large-scale human operation.'

'We have found it,' Arkady broke in. 'Almost a mountain of ore! Chunks of pure metallic sodium. I can see the installation now—a pithead, a spaceport, the robot min­ers, conveyers, the hum of mighty machines!'

'Whenever you Russians get poetic it is always tractors or mighty machines,' Captain Hegg said, catching the spark of their enthusiasm. 'Now climb out of those suits. And if either of you are capable of it, I would enjoy hav­ing a written report that I can send off as soon as possi­ble.'