"You're a hero!" Morna cried, seizing Ranjit's hands. "How does it feel to be a Saver? It must be sublime!" She turned to Henry and grasped his arms. "How do you feel, Henry? You must almost worship Ranjit! Such a noble man!"
Ranjit cackled. "Look at him blush! I don't believe he's been around girls much. Since Joachim don't have no claim on her, Henry, I'd do some sweet talking if I was your age. I pulled Henry in on a lifeline, or he'd be falling into the methane by now."
"Isn't that wonderful?" Morna marveled, smiling glamorously.
Joachim said, "Everyone be quiet and allow me to finish! I have come thirteen hundred million kilometers on a mission, and I intend to fulfill it! I am Second Vice-President of the Society for the Preservation of the Rings of Saturn. You, Ranjit, and the people on the other three stations in the Rings are destroying the most glorious and inspiring feature of the Solar System! The divine pinnacle of Creation! A miracle that may be unique in the Universe! You are destroying the Rings of Saturn for the greedy, selfish purpose of selling fuel to spaceships!"
"Spaceships got to have fuel," Ranjit said, "and don't talk so loud. Ice is scarce, you know, unless you want to chase comets. One side of Iapetus has a sheet, and Titan has some. If you go on in, you'll find a little on some of the Moons of Jupiter, and a few of the Asteroids are—"
Joachim said, "You are destroying the Rings of Saturn! This is the most despicable crime in a long history of the devastation of nature by greedy men! When you have eventually melted the last crystal of ice and departed with your hoard, Saturn will spin desolately alone through the night, shorn of his glorious halo that has been the solace and inspiration of man since prehistoric times!"
"Not when they never had telescopes, it wasn't very inspiring," Ranjit said. "I don't see why you're jumping on me, Joachim. I never answered your letters because there wasn't nothing to say. I just work here. You'll have to talk to the company to—"
"The Saturnine Fuel and Oxygen Company is headed by stubborn men!" Joachim said. "They refuse to consider or answer our demands! That is why I have come to appeal directly to the operators of these ice-sweepers! You must immediately stop sweeping the Rings into your tanks! You must tell your superiors that you refuse to destroy the crowning glory of the Solar System!"
Ranjit said, "They'd just hire somebody else. I don't know as we are destroying the Rings very fast. This was the first sweeper put in orbit nine years ago, and I can't tell no difference in Ring B. There's an awful lot of stuff in the Rings. Some of the balls are solid ice, but some are just ice coated, so we melt it off and throw out the core. Some don't have ice on it, so we throw it back. We don't use hydroponics on the sweepers. We get plenty of oxygen when we take off hydrogen, so we toss a lot of solid CO2 overboard, too. No, we ain't taking as much from the Rings as you think. They'll get ionic motors to working, one of these days, and it won't take hardly no fuel at all."
"Nevertheless, I believe—" Joachim tried to say.