Afield, you wore a spacesuit, and conversed by helmet radiophone. Otherwise you lived in rooms and holes dug underground, and sealed up. The scant water you dared use was roasted out of gypsum rock. The oxygen you breathed was extracted from lunar oxides by a chemical process. Then air-rejuvenator apparatus reseparated it from the carbon-dioxide you exhaled, so that you could use it over and over.
Copeland had read the tales: With that kind of frugality as the price of survival, lunar prospectors could turn selfish to the point of queerness. Afraid somebody might follow them to their mineral claims, they'd take more pains to leave as little spoor as possible than a fox being tracked by dogs.
"Speaking of how footprints last around here," Copeland remarked for the sake of conversation, "I understand you've got to be careful—stick to high ridges, and to parts of the flat maria where there's no old volcanic ash or dust of thermal erosion."
"Guys who do that are misers and old women, kid," Brinker scoffed. "Hell—it sure ain't because they're modest that they're so cautious! Me—I do things right."
He lifted a foot from the dust beside the path, revealing the mark of the specially etched steel sole of his spaceboot. A name was stamped across the print: BRINKER.
"I'm proud of where I've been and where I'm going—like a true explorer," the big man said. "Get some soles like mine made for yourself, fella, and come along with me."
Copeland was intrigued. "Let me think about it a little."
DURING the next few hours he heard quite a lot.
A big, blonde nurse—one of the two women in the sealed warrens of Tycho Station, said: "Young man, I love Jess Brinker. But keep away from him, or you'll wind up in the prison pits, or worse."