"You want some pretty sound advice? I'd suggest you stay here at the station and wait for the first Earthbound ship."
"Thanks," said Steve. "But Mr. Carmical hired me at least as far as Mercury, so that's where I'm going."
Teejay grinned. "You're a plucky kid, Stedman. All right, Mercury it is—but LeClarc can do the honors when it's time to see you off the Gordak for good. He doesn't exactly like you, Stedman."
"I've been told that."
"All right, move along. There's a whole line of men I've got to check in behind you."
A plucky kid, Steve thought, and laughed. She'd called him that, although he knew she'd probably have a hard time matching his twenty-five years. Well, she'd spent her life in space and on the frontier worlds. Maybe that did make a difference.
Five minutes later, they blasted clear of the space-station on an orbit that would intersect the Mercurian ellipse at perihelion. From there, the Gordak would visit Venus, Mars, the planetoid Ceres, the four large Jovian moons, Titan and Uranus. Ten worlds in all the hunters would touch on—and each world would offer up its native fauna for the Brody Carmical Circus. Steve wondered if there'd be trouble with Barling Brothers Interplanetary. There generally was. But then he smiled without mirth, for the chances were he'd never get beyond the first landing on Mercury, anyway.
There were fifty men in the Gordak's crew and another thirty-odd in the expedition, and a space ship being the complicated, labyrinthine device that it is, it wasn't too strange that Steve failed to encounter LeClarc until immediately before landing on Mercury. Then the Gordak's deceleration tubes had cut in and Steve found the most readily available accel-hammock in the general lounge. The Frenchman was stretched out on the cushions three feet from him.
LeClarc said, "This will be a terrible, hot place."