Then I was pumping his hand, congratulating him. Really good luck was a phenomenon among the asteroids. That friends of mine, among the thousands of hopeful ones that I didn't know, should grab the jack-pot, seemed almost impossible.
"I suppose you'll all be leaving us soon," I told him. "Going back to Earth, living the lives of millionaires. I'm glad for you all, kid. Your Pa can raise his flowers and grapes, instead of starting up in the truck-garden business again. Your sis, Irene, can study her painting and her music, like she wants to."
Anybody can see the way my thoughts were going just then. When you start out green for the Minor Planets, that's part of what's in your mind, first—get rich, come back to Earth.
Nick sighed heavily as we walked along. That funny smile was on his lips again. He glanced around, and the emerald light of the illuminators was on his young face.
Then he said, "I don't think it's quite safe to talk here, Chet. Better come to our old space jaloppy, the Corfu."
The Corfu was on the ways outside the dome. We put on space suits to reach it. Inside, the old crate smelled of cooking odors, some of them maybe accumulated over the eighteen months the Mavrocordatuses had been asteroid mining. Old ships are hard to ventilate, with their imperfect air-purifiers.
The instruments in the control room, were battered and patched; and from the living quarters to the rear, issued a duet of snores—one throaty and rattly, Pa Mavrocordatus' beyond doubt; and the other an intermittent hiss, originating unquestionably in the dust-filtering hairs in the larynx of Geedeh, the little Martian scientist, whom Nick had befriended.
"I can't figure you out, Nick," I said. "Rich, and not leaving this hell-hole of space. You're an idiot."
"So are you, Chet," he returned knowingly. "In my place, you wouldn't go either—at least not without regrets. In spite of all hell, there's something big here in space that gets you. You feel like nothing, yourself. But you feel that you're part of something terribly huge and terribly important. You'd be happy on Earth for a week; then you'd begin to smother inside. The Minor Planets have become our home, Chet. It's too late to break the ties."