Then, the meteors unloaded and hauled away. Kinnison dickered with Strongheart concerning the supplies he would need during his next trip; the hundred-and-one items which are necessary to make a tiny spaceship a self-contained, self-sufficient, warm and inhabitable worldlet in the immense and unfriendly vacuity of space. Here, too, the Lensman was overcharged shamelessly; but that, too, was routine. No one would, or could be expected to, do business in any such place as Miners' Rest in any sane or ordinary percentage of profit.
When Strongheart counted out to him the net proceeds of the voyage, Kinnison scratched reflectively at his whiskery chin.
"That ain't hardly enough, I don't think, for the real, old-fashioned, stem-winding bender I was figuring on," he ruminated. "I been out a long time and I was figuring on doing the thing up brown. Have to let go of my nugget, too, I guess. Kinda hate to—been packing it around quite a while—but here she is." He reached into his kit-bag and tossed over the lump of really precious metal. "Let you have it for fifteen hundred credits."
"Fifteen hundred! An idiot you must be, or you should think I'm one, I don't know?" Strongheart yelped, as he juggled the mass lightly from hand to hand. "Two hundred, you mean ... well two fifty, then, but that's an awful high bid, mister, believe me. I tell you, I couldn't give my own mother over three hundred—I'd lose money on the goods. You ain't tested it, what makes you think it's such a much?"
"No, and I notice you ain't testing it, neither," Kinnison countered. "Me and you both know metal well enough so we don't need to test no such nugget as that. Fifteen hundred or I flit to a mint and get full value for it. I don't have to stay here, you know, by all the nine hells of Valeria. There's millions of other places where I can get just as drunk and have just as good a time as I can here."
There ensued howls of protest, but Strongheart finally yielded, as the Lensman had known that he would. He could have forced him higher, but fifteen hundred was enough.
"Now, sir, just the guarantee and you're all set for a lot of fun." Strongheart's anguish had departed miraculously upon the instant of the deal's closing. "We take your keys, and when your money's gone and you come back to get 'em, to sell your supplies or your ship or whatever, we takes you, without hurting you a bit more than we have to, and sober you up, quick as scat. A room here, whenever you want it, included. Padded, sir, very nice and comfortable—you can't hurt yourself, possibly. We been in business here for years, with perfect satisfaction. Not one of our customers—and we got hundreds who never go nowhere else—have we ever let sell any of the stuff he had laid in for his next trip, and we never steal none of his supplies, neither. Only two hundred credits for the whole service, sir. Cheap, sir—very, very cheap at the price."
"Um-m-m"—Kinnison again scratched meditatively, this time at the nape of his neck—"I'll take your guarantee, I guess, because sometimes, when I get to going real good, I don't know just exactly when to stop. But I won't need no padded cell. Me, I don't never get violent. I always taper off on twenty-four units of bentlam. That gives me twenty-four hours on the shelf, and then I'm all set for another stretch out in the ether. You couldn't get me no benny, I don't suppose, and if you could it wouldn't be no damn good."
This was the critical instant, the moment the Lensman had been approaching so long and so circuitously. Mind was already reading mind, Kinnison did not need the speech which followed.
"Twenty-four units!" Strongheart exclaimed. That was a heroic dose—but the man before him was of heroic mold. "Sure of that?"