Ghost Town Clue
Rick refused point-blank to go to bed. He wasn't tired, he insisted, and he meant it.
Scotty yielded. "Okay. I see your point. It's hard enough to sleep in the daytime anyway, but when you're all keyed up, it's impossible. Didn't lunch make you sleepy at all?"
"A little, but that shower and change of clothes woke me up again. Scotty, I'll never forget that horrible instant when I realized that Orion wasn't going to take off. Honest, it was like watching something beautiful die. It..."
Hank Leeming, their security officer roommate, came into the bunkroom in time to hear Rick's last comment. Hank was young, usually smiling. He wasn't smiling now. "I was in the blockhouse when the first one blew. I know how you feel, Rick. It makes you want to lay violent hands on the man responsible."
The security officer changed the subject abruptly. "Luis Hermosa wants to see the boy who saved his life, and the one who helped."
"You mean the fireman who fell in the propellant?" Scotty asked.
"That's the one. He's in the infirmary. Can you both go?"
Scotty shrugged. "Sure. If he wants us to. But he doesn't owe us anything. Someone else would have dragged him out if we hadn't."
"If you hadn't," Rick corrected. "I didn't move fast enough."