"Murphy, it's uranium we want. We're not zoologists. The next time you go specimen chasing—"
"But it looked like a frog, Chief. I swear it did."
"You know damn well no froglike animal could hop around on red-hot rocks."
"I won't let him out of my sight this time, sir," said the miner at Murphy's heels.
"Thank you, Haines. He needs a nurse, but do what you can."
Five miners stepped out, each with a glance from Ellison which said as plain as words that he would walk beside them until they came back in again. The old man had so much quiet strength that he could split off simulacra of himself, and send them out through the airlock by just passing out advice. He moved like a living presence over the semi-molten Mercurian crust beside each of his men, fretting when a coupling slipped or mysterious stirrings caused the lads to look at one another with a wild surmise.
He knew that the merciless heat beating down did something to the scarred and cracked surface rocks which made them seem to buckle and split up into little leaping ghosts, and half his warnings were directed against "heat-devils" and other optical illusions.
When the last man had passed out he turned to me with a wry smile. "Dave, speaking as a psychiatrist, and without knowing for sure, I've a hunch there is too much tension inside of you."
The old man actually was a psychiatrist. You have to be pretty nearly everything to qualify as a Mercury run commander and Ellison's knowledge started with Aasen and ended with Zwolle. There were some gaps in between, but not many, and he frequently surprised me by pulling rabbits out of those.
We went down into the cuddy and the old man brought out some real smoky Scotch, and we had at least three while a strained look came into his face. One of these days someone is going to stop putting bulkhead chronometers in the cuddies of Mercury run spaceships. Men have to go out and Commanders have to wait, and if an officer can't get his mind off the seconds in a cuddy what chance has he of relaxing at all?