"You never know the cost. Only your executor knows that. It's the Trader Tom plan."
"Well, is it guaranteed?"
"There are no guarantees," Trader Tom admitted. "But I've never had any complaints yet."
"Suppose I'm the first?" Manet suggested reasonably.
"You won't be," Trader Tom said. "I won't pass this way again."
Manet didn't open the box. He let it fade quietly in the filtered but still brilliant sunlight near a transparent wall.
Manet puttered around the spawning monster, trying to brush the copper taste of the station out of his mouth in the mornings, talking to himself, winking at Annie Oakley, and waiting to go mad.
Finally, Manet woke up one morning. He lay in the sheets of his bunk, suppressing the urge to go wash his hands, and came at last to the conclusion that, after all the delay, he was mad.
So he went to open the box.