Here came Fane's great distinction. He was the sole survivor of the Martell Expedition, the one man alive who had been on the most sunward world. Six months he'd spent there. That made him an object of awe in younger eyes. It also inspired insidious doubts about him.
And the one thing that set Rick Mills a little apart from other hard young experts that had recently graduated from the Survey Service School on Mars, and who now formed most of the five hundred aboard the Sun Child, was that he had almost made friends with Fane. Curiosity, and warmth toward people had prompted the effort. And wariness before suspicion.
From his bunk across from Rick's, Fane now spoke:
"Well, here we go. Just a few more minutes. The end of book learning, eh, you guys? The beginning of experience. I wonder if all of us will still be alive inside of twenty-four hours?"
Maybe it wasn't malicious humor. Maybe it was just the brutal kind of joshing that helps to make men.
"Shut up, Fane," Rick joshed back in the tough manner that Fane seemed to like in him. "Keep on your toes yourself or you might be the first to die."
Fane chuckled. "Always the smart boy, eh, Mills? Better keep it up. Because Mercury's a crazy place. It's the planet closest to the sun. But it forgot to turn on its axis ages ago. So the dark side is colder than Pluto must be. But on the solar side your space-boots can slosh into wetness that you might believe is water. Umhm-m. Only it turns out to be a puddle of molten lead.
"Hell, you guys have always known stuff like that. So why repeat myself? When there are interesting circumstances? A push-button war fifty million years old that got put into cold storage, for instance. Dead storage. But maybe not quite dead. I wouldn't know, for sure. How about getting mixed up with that?"
Some strange jubilance seemed to possess Fane.
The retard-jets of the Sun Child thundered to check vast speed. Conversation died as, from the zero of free-fall, weight rose to five gravities, pushing the corners of men's mouths back toward their ears.