"Well, keep trying. Let me know if you get through. Well?" The skipper glanced back over his shoulder. "Well, I thought you two were tired? What are you waiting for? Want to stand another trick apiece?"
"No, sir!" said both men hastily. "We're leaving, sir!" They fled.
"Ain't he a whipper, though?" asked Chandler affectionately. "He growls like a terrier pup, but he's got no more bite than a cup custard. 'Scuse me!" A gigantic yawn split his grin in two. "Must have been something I et!"
"The hell of it is," said Mallory ruefully, "now I'm off duty, I'm not a bit tired. I wasn't tired at all, really. Just had hardening of the panties from squatting in that seat so long. Got a cigarette?"
Chandler tossed him a package. "And don't swipe the coupon, either. Six thousand more and I get an electronic microscope. Well, you can do what you like. I'm going bye-bye and try to forget the waffles that bucket-seat has pressed into my hip pockets. 'Night, pal!"
His footsteps rang sharp little echoes on the metal flooring, echoes that hollowed as he disappeared down a corridor leading to the sleeping quarters and Mallory turned toward the observation deck.
The tall First Mate leaned against the heavy quartzite pane staring into the depths of space through which the Libra scudded. The sight was no novelty to him, but as ever it wakened in his heart a sense of awe, a feeling of weird instability, a sort of pride in Man that he, of all the many, strange life-forms experimenting nature had devised, should so far be the only one whose imagination was so great, whose curiosity was so strong, that he had found a way to fling himself at blinding speed across the broad, unfathomable reaches of the void.
It was disheartening to realize that even though he had attained the stars, Man had not yet sloughed off the instincts and habits of the ape from which he sprang. Man's genius had blazed a path across the spaceways, Man's bravery had established new colonies from scorching Mercury to frozen Uranus. SSP lightships bridged the chasms between and beyond; even now the concentrated rays of faraway Sol were steaming the rimy crust off Pluto that Earth's miners might extract the valuable ores revealed by the spectroscope. But with the growth of the colonies, Man's ever latent cupidity had come into play. This past half century, thought Dan Mallory with a sort of savage anger, had been nothing but one long, bloody era of warfare between the forces of law and the outlawry of the greedy.
Now there was this uprising on the first satellite of Jupiter; Io. A charming little world. A pleasant Earth-like orb, spinning quietly about its gigantic parent. Up to this time, its natives had never been troublesome. Squat, muscular creatures, more or less anthropoid, except for the fact that their complexions had a pale, greenish cast and their eyes were double-lidded like those of snakes. They had an intelligence of .63 on the Solar Constant scale. Within a century or so the control board meant to award them autonomy; toward this end educators had been working ever since Io had been removed from the British Imperial Protectorate in 2221.