One name caught my eye.
Ted Bradley was listed there. Ted Bradley from St. Louis, my and Nick Mavrocordatus' home town. It gave me a little jolt, and a momentary lump somewhere under my Adam's Apple. I knew the state Bradley would be in. Not a man any more—no longer keen and sure of himself. A year out here among the asteroids had changed all that forever.
Shoving from one drifting, meteoric lump to another, in a tiny space boat. Chipping at those huge, grey masses with a test hammer that makes no sound in the voidal vacuum. Crawling over jagged surfaces, looking for ores of radium and tantalum and carium—stuff fabulously costly enough to be worth collecting, for shipment back to the industries of Earth, at fabulous freight rates, on rocket craft whose pay-load is so small, and where every gram of mass is at premium.
No, Ted Bradley would never be himself again. Like so many others. It was an old story. The almost complete lack of gravity, out here among the asteroids, had disturbed his nerve-centers, while cosmic rays seeped through his leaded helmet, slowly damaging his brain.
There was more to it than the airlessness, and absence of weight, and the cosmic rays. There was the utter silence, and the steady stars, and the blackness between them, and the blackness of the shadows, like the fangs of devils in the blazing sunshine. All of this was harder than the soul of any living being.
And on top of all this, there was usually defeat and shattered hope. Not many futures were made among the asteroids by those who dug for their living. Prices of things brought from Earth in fragile, costly space craft were too high. Moments of freedom and company were too rare, and so, hard-won wealth ran like water.
Ted Bradley was gone from us. Call him a corpse, really. In the hospital here on Enterprize, he was either a raving maniac, or else—almost worse—he was like a little child, crooning over the wonder of his fingers.
It got me for a second. But then I shrugged. I'd been out here two years. An old timer. I knew how empires were built. I knew, better than most, how to get along out here. Be fatalistic and casual. Don't worry. Don't plan too much. That way I'd stayed right-side-up. I'd even had quite a lot of fun, being an adventurer, against that gigantic, awesome background of the void.
I didn't consider my thoughts about Ted Bradley worth mentioning to Nick Mavrocordatus. He was probably thinking about Ted, too, and that was enough.
"Come on, Nick," I said. "They've got my ore weighed and analyzed for content in the hopper rooms. I'm going into the pay-office and get my dough. Then we might shove off to the Iridium Circle, or some other joint, and have us a time, huh?"