"Sure," said Corbett. "Sure. But why Base Camp?"
"You know why."
"That's right, we know why," agreed Jenks, and Corbett grinned in his ten days' tussock of beard.
"They'll have left supplies for us," Wofforth went on. "Shelter and food and fuel and instruments. They'll expect us to reach Base Camp and hold it down for the next attempt to reach Pluto."
"We know why," repeated Jenks. "And that's not why, lieutenant. Let me talk, sir. It's a dead man talking."
"You won't die," snapped Wofforth. "I'll get you both there alive."
He stepped to where, in one corner, he had managed a bath—a hollow in the frozen ground, lined by pushing the floor fabric into it. From the heater he ran tepid, clean water into it. He clipped a mirror to the tent foil, searched out an automatic razor, and began to shave his own dark young thatch of beard.
"You're proving my point, lieutenant," said Jenks. "Policing up your face to look pretty."
"Why not?" growled Wofforth, mowing another swath of whiskers.
"No reason why not. Ten, twenty years from now they'll find your body—whenever the inner orbits get to where they can boom off another expedition. You'll look young and clean-shaved. You know who'll weep."