"Once a screwball," insisted McCracken firmly, "always a screwball."
Lamoureux lost patience. "Once an idiot, always an idiot. Get over to the ship and help with the unpacking. And remember, if we don't find Kalinoff, it'll be your fault, and God help you."
Having, he hoped, left McCracken feeling properly ashamed of himself, Lamoureux walked away. The responsibility was beginning to weigh him down. The other nineteen men in the expedition thought they were merely trying to rescue an intrepid explorer for the sake of human life, which was supposed to be sacred. They didn't know that, behind his screwball surface, Kalinoff was as shrewd as they came. He had made some valuable discoveries—and promptly staked out a claim to them.
He had run across large quantities of stable isotopes of metals whose atomic numbers ranged from 95 to 110. These had remarkable and useful properties.
They were, to begin with, of unusual value as catalysts in chemical reactions. For example, element 99, in the presence of air, was a more powerful oxidizing agent than platinum or palladium was a reducing agent, in the presence of hydrogen. And the oxidations could be controlled beautifully, could be made to affect almost any part of a complicated organic molecule at a time. Element 99 was recoverable, and could be used again and again. A few hundred grams of it alone might very well pay for the cost of the entire expedition.
Add the value of a few kilos of elements 101 to 110, and Kalinoff had discovered enough to make him and a few other people rich for life.
Lamoureux wanted to be one of those other people. He had three kids he wanted to send through Lunar Tech; he had a wife with expensive tastes in robot servants; and he had relatives. Let him get Kalinoff off this God-forsaken planet, where he had been marooned for the past year, and even an interplanetary screwball might be expected to show some feeling of gratitude. Combine this feeling of gratitude with a reasonably fair contract already printed, and needing only the explorer's scrawl to give it validity, and Lamoureux could almost feel the money in his pocket. If only McCracken had not spoiled everything by his stupidity—
Lamoureux shuddered to think that by the time they got to him Kalinoff might be dead, and they would have to do business with his heirs—heirs who had no sense of gratitude to impair their business judgment. He felt suddenly poor again. But he put the gloomy thought out of his head, and went on with his work.