"Let me think." Presently he said to Tex, "Go in there-" Oscar indicated one of a row of 'fresher booths, "-and take off your uniform. Hand it out and lock yourself in. We'll be back after a while." Tex seemed to feel that he was being consigned to the salt mines, but there was no real opposition left in him. He went. Shortly thereafter Matt and Oscar left, Oscar with a tightly rolled bundle of a cadet uniform under one arm.
They took the slideway half around the Station, through crowds of gorgeously dressed and hurrying people, past rich and beckoning shops. Matt enjoyed it thoroughly.
"They say," said Oscar, "that this is what the big cities used to be like, back before the Disorders." ^
"It certainly doesn't look like Des Moines."
"Nor like Venus." Oscar found what he was looking for, an automatic laundry service, in a passageway off the waiting room of the emigrant zone. After a considerable wait the uniform came back to them, clean, pressed, and neatly packaged. It being Terra Station, the cost was sky high. Matt looked at what remained of his funds.
"Might as well be broke," he said and invested the remainder in a pound of chocolate-coated cherries. They hurried back. Tex looked so woe-begone and so glad to see them that Matt had a sudden burst of generosity and handed the box to Tex. "Present to you, you poor, miserable, worthless critter."
Tex seemed touched by the gesture-it was no more than a gesture, since candy and such are, by ancient right, community property among roommates.
"Hurry up and get dressed, Tex. The scooter shoves off in just thirty-two minutes." Twenty-five minutes later, suited up, they were filing into the airlock, Tex with the chocolates under his arm.
The trip back was without incident, except for one thing: Matt had not thought to specify a pressure container for the candy. Before Tex could strap down the box had bulged.
By the time they reached the Randolph the front and left side of his space suit was covered with a bubbly, sticky mess compounded of cherry juice, sugar syrup, and brown stains of chocolate as the semi-liquid confection boiled and expanded in the vacuum. He would have thrown the package away had not the oldster, strapped next to him in the rack, reminded him of the severe penalties for jettisoning anything in a traffic lane.