“The galley isn’t on Sunside.”
“It’ll percolate through, damn it.”
Rioz stepped through the door and Long stared after him for a long moment, then turned back to the video. He did not turn up the thermostat.
The picture was still flickering badly, but it would have to do. Long folded a chair down out of the wall. He leaned forward, waiting through the formal announcement, the momentary pause before the slow dissolution of the curtain, the spotlight picking out the well-known bearded figure which grew as it was brought forward until it filled the screen.
The voice, impressive even through the flutings and croakings induced by the electron storms of twenty millions of miles, began:
“Friends! My fellow citizens of Earth…”
2
Rioz’s eye caught the flash of the radio signal as he stepped into the pilot room. For one moment, the palms of his hands grew clammy when it seemed to him that it was a radar pip; but that was only his guilt speaking. He should not have left the pilot room while on duty theoretically, though all Scavengers did it. Still, it was the standard nightmare, this business of a strike turning up during just those five minutes when one knocked off for a quick coffee because it seemed certain that space was clear. And the nightmare had been known to happen, too.
Rioz threw in the multi-scanner. It was a waste of power, but while he was thinking about it, he might as well make sure.
Space was clear except for the far-distant echoes from the neighboring ships on the scavenging line.