Sofi reached the airlock, burst inside, sealed and locked the outer door behind her. The air had scarcely filled the chamber before she flung open the inner door, confronted Henry Ohm, and exploded into a flood of angry words. Not a sound escaped her plastic helmet which she had forgotten to remove.
He let her rattle away silently inside her helmet, nodding at intervals, rubbing his chin until she paused for breath.
"That's what you get for trying to run a mine all alone on this god-forsaken asteroid," he informed her, "even if you are a yellow-haired hell cat."
Sofi looked at him blankly.
Ohm rapped with his knuckles on her helmet. "If you'd take that thing off, you could hear me. But you're the excitable type. Probably have an overactive thyroid."
Sofi jerked off her helmet. She had a mass of fine wavy yellow hair cut like a halo about her oval face. Her features were delicately moulded, her eyes large and blue. She was only a few inches shorter than Henry Ohm, but more slenderly built.
"What the hell were you saying?" she demanded suspiciously.
"I wanted to know what you'd been doing to the robots this time?"
"Me?"
"What happened in the mine?"