"What's the matter, Jake?"
"Nothin', Mr. Adam. I was just wonderin', that's all, if maybe you volunteered for this, but I don't s'pose you'd care to tell."
"I don't mind telling you. Captain McCausland assigned me."
Burchall scratched his head, evidently seeking to choose his words.
"You think a mighty lot of him, don't you, Mr. Adam?"
Adam stopped dressing with a zipper half closed, his mouth open. "Why sure! Ever since I was a kid—I remember being brought up on the story of how Steel-Wall McCausland saved the Venus mail rocket, the time—"
"Yes, I know, Mr. Adam. But looky here, I'm goin' to tell you for your own good, there some folks think Old Steel-Wall is a little bit too smooth outside and too hard inside, and I ain't satisfied. There's some mighty funny things goin' on. I don't like the way he called us in from that port detail—and that there navigation around the planetoids—and this here exploring trip—I'm just maybe a old fool, but I got my ideas."
"Bunk, Jake. Captain McCausland has other people to think of, too...." Adam's sentence trailed off as he remembered the Captain's willingness to give up the expedition when they had landed on the wet surface of Pluto. Could it be possible that the hero of his boyhood, the man Paulette was going to marry—?
"What have you got there?" Jake Burchall's voice interrupted his chain of thought. "I s'pose the Captain gave you that, too?" inquired the old engineer, picking up the rocket pistol, and when Adam nodded. "Not for mine, Mr. Adam. Them things is twict as dangerous to you as to whatever you shoot 'em at. Come back there with me to the engine room. I got some of those marble bombs stuck on long rods back there. When you poke something with them, you know the explosion isn't going to blow you into the middle of next week."
Cased like lobsters in their space suits the pair waddled clumsily up the spiral ramp to the main outlet lock. The pair of duty men at the lock swung the handles in a bored manner, and just as he was entering Adam thought he caught another glimpse of Paulette around the corner of the corridor, and raised one sheathed arm to wave her farewell, but she did not answer.