Prokle rolled over, half opened one eye and muttered, "Nothing's more important than sleep, out here. Hell, can't it wait 'til tomorrow—"
"I'll let you be the judge of that," Garth said with calm emphasis. "It's an uncharted swarm."
The effect was electric. Instantly Prokle was awake and on his feet, fumbling with his space equipment, no more questions asked. Garth smiled to himself, and moved over to his own equipment. He had been out here a long time and had often seen the effect of those magical words, "uncharted swarm." But never had he known them to work in quite the way they did on Prokle.
Uncharted swarm! To men such as they, that meant much—or it meant nothing. But above all things it meant a chance, and eternal hope. It had all begun twenty years ago when the group of four men over on Station J5 had found gold on one of the uncharted asteroid swarms. They had pledged secrecy and worked it the smart way, leaving the swarm unreported. They had mined the gold until the rocks sped too far away in their orbit for them to venture out in safety; but they had obtained enough to buy off the duration of their penal terms, and had gone back to Earth very rich men.
Some years later Malcolm and Schroeder, on M1, had made a similar strike, but platinum. They worked it the same secret way. Malcolm had died, and there were rumors his partner had murdered him. Schroeder, through the obvious channels, had bought off his remaining sentence. Through the years there were other such rumors, and "uncharted swarm" had become magic words to all Salvage Station men. Secrecy, jealousy, hope continued to prevail.
Except with Garth. Garth knew that all the precious metals in all the asteroids would not suffice to buy his freedom.
The two men stepped from their sleeping quarters out onto the metal platform which had been Garth's world for twenty-three years, Prokle's for two. It was a tiny world, extending in each direction for a mere quarter of a mile to end abruptly at the edge of the eternal darkness. Man-made, glass-domed, it was the tiniest of all the Salvage Stations. Garth had been stationed there at his own request, defiantly, alone at first. He had worked alone pirating the spaceways, not liking the company of many men. He still didn't.
But he did like the single men they sent out to him now when necessary. And it was frequently necessary. The trouble was, either their sentences expired too quickly, or they did! Garth's last two partners had done that—one stumbling clumsily over a precipice while exploring, shattering his oxygen helmet; the other being crushed in his solo cruiser between two asteroid masses from which Garth himself only narrowly escaped.
And Prokle he liked perhaps best of all. Prokle was the reckless type and it was those who always, somehow, managed to survive. It was Prokle, too, who had hung the name "Hype" on Garth and made him like it. He had first called him "hyper" because of that amazing, premonitory sensitivity of his; then shortened it to "Hype." Garth had at first resented it, then bore it laughingly, then liked it.