it for the sake of mobility. The self-sealing hull was thin magnesium, the outer shell periodically renewed as cosmic sand eroded it.
“I’m not surprised we orbited, instead of docking,” Ellen remarked. “We’d have butted against your radar and bellied into your control tower.”
“Well, actually, no,” said Blades. “Even half finished, our dock’s big enough to accommodate you, as you’ll see today. Don’t forget, we anticipate a lot of traffic in the future. I’m puzzled why you didn’t accept our invitation to use it.”
“Doctrine!” Warburton clipped.
The sun came past the blind and touched the officers’ faces with incandescence. Did some look startled, one or two open their mouths as if to protest and then snap them shut again at a warning look? Blades’ spine tingled. I never heard of any such doctrine, he thought, least of all when a North American ship drops in on a North American Station.
“Is . . . er . . . is there some international crisis brewing?” he inquired.
“Why, no.” Ellen straightened from the telescope. “I’d say relations have seldom been as good as they are now. What makes you ask?”
“Well, the reason your captain didn’t—”
“Never mind,” Warburton said. “We’d better continue the tour, if you please.”
Blades filed his misgivings for later reference. He might have fretted immediately, but Ellen Ziska’s presence forbade that. A sort of Pauli exclusion principle. One can’t have two spins simultaneously, can one? He gave her his arm again. “Let’s go on to Central Control,” he proposed. “That’s right behind the people section.”
“You know, I can’t get over it,” she told him softly. “This miracle you’ve wrought. I’ve never been more proud of being human.”
“Is this your first long space trip?”
“Yes, I was stationed at Port Colorado before the new Administration reshuffled armed service assignments.”
“They did? How come?”
“I don’t know. Well, that is, during the election campaign the Social Justice Party did talk a lot about old-line officers who were too hidebound to carry out modern policies effectively. But it sounded rather silly to me.”
Warburton compressed his lips. “I do not believe it is proper for service officers to discuss political issues publicly,” he said like a machine gun.
Ellen flushed. “S-sorry, commander.”
Blades felt a helpless anger on her account. He wasn’t sure why. What was she to him? He’d probably never see her again. A hell of an attractive target, to be sure; and after so much celibacy he was highly vulnerable; but did she really matter?
He turned his back on Warburton and his eyes on her—a five thousand per cent improvement—and diverted her from her embarrassment by asking, “Are you from Colorado, then, Miss Ziska?”
“Oh, no. Toronto.”
“How’d you happen to join the Navy, if I may make so bold?”
“Gosh, that’s hard to say. But I guess mostly I felt so crowded at home. So, pigeonholed. The world seemed to be nothing but neat little pigeonholes.”
“Uh-huh. Same here. I was also a square pigeon in a round hole.” She laughed. “Luckily,” he added, “Space is too big for compartments.”
Her agreement lacked vigor. The Navy must have been a disappointment to her. But she couldn’t very well say so in front of her shipmates.
Hm-m-m . . . if she could be gotten away from them—“How long will you be here?” he inquired. His pulse thuttered.
“We haven’t been told,” she said.
“Some work must be done on the missile launchers,” Warburton said. “That’s best carried out here, where extra facilities are available if we need them. Not that I expect we will.” He paused. “I hope we won’t interfere with your own operations.”
“Far from it.” Blades beamed at Ellen. “Or, more accurately, this kind of interference I don’t mind in the least.”
She blushed and her eyelids fluttered. Not that she was a fluffhead, he realized. But to avoid incidents, Navy regulations enforced an inhuman correctness between personnel of opposite sexes. After weeks in the black, meeting a man who could pay a compliment without risking court-martial must be like a shot of adrenalin. Better and better!
“Are you sure?” Warburton persisted. “For instance, won’t we be in the way when the next ship comes from Jupiter?”
“She’ll approach the opposite end of the asteroid,” Blades said. “Won’t stay long, either.”
“How long?”
“One watch, so the crew can relax a bit among those of us who’re off duty. It’d be a trifle longer if we didn’t happen to have an empty bag at the moment. But never very long. Even running under thrust the whole distance, Jupe’s a good ways off. They’ve no time to waste.”
“When is the next ship due?”
“The Pallas Castle is expected in the second watch from now.”
“Second watch. I see.” Warburton stalked on with a brooding expression on his Puritan face.
*
Blades might have speculated about that, but someone asked him why the Station depended on spin for weight. Why not put in an internal field generator, like a ship? Blades explained patiently that an Emett large enough to produce uniform pull through a volume as big as the Sword was rather expensive. “Eventually, when we’re a few megabucks ahead of the game—”
“Do you really expect to become rich?” Ellen asked. Her tone was awed. No Earthsider had that chance any more, except for the great corporations. “Individually rich?”
“We can’t fail to. I tell you, this is a frontier like nothing since the Conquistadores. We could very easily have been wiped out in the first couple of years—financially or physically—by any of a thousand accidents. But now we’re too far along for that. We’ve got it made, Jimmy and I.”
“What will you do with your wealth?”
“Live like an old-time sultan,” Blades grinned. Then, because it was true as well as because he wanted to shine in her eyes: “Mostly, though, we’ll go on to new things. There’s so much that needs to be done. Not simply more asteroid mines. We need farms; timber; parks; passenger and cargo liners; every sort of machine. I’d like to try getting at some of that water frozen in the Saturnian System. Altogether, I see no end to the jobs. It’s no good our depending on Earth for anything. Too expensive, too chancy. The Belt has to be made completely self-sufficient.”
“With a nice rakeoff for Sword Enterprises,” Gilbertson scoffed.
“Why, sure. Aren’t we entitled to some return?”
“Yes.
