We took turns, and our hopes for a happy home life out here on 4270 were shot to hell. One of us would sit listening, head buried in his helmet, another would bustle about, keeping the functions of the dome in order, and the third would sleep.
It was my turn to sleep, and I can remember the beginning of what would have been a corker of a dream. The visitors in the other spaceship weren't men at all, but hideous monsters from some nameless extra-Solar place, trying to decide where in the Solar System they'd like to live. They seemed ornery enough to decide on crowded Earth.
I never knew for sure. One of them was breathing down my neck, then poking me, and I sat up fast. It was Gramps, and he was scowling at me frantically inside his fishbowl helmet.
I didn't have to be told. My own helmet sat securely on my shoulders in a matter of seconds, and I listened. You could hardly tell the voices apart, but from the conversation you knew that there were two of them.
"... all over this planetoid. Aw, what's the use? The boss just had a wrong notion, that's all."
"I dunno. Can't be sure. This is a small place, yeah: but there's enough wrinkles and folds to keep you looking for months. We ain't covered nothing yet. Also, how's about inside the other dome. It could be there, eh?"
"Well, it better not be. If those guys in there find it before us...." I didn't know what "it" was but I liked this voice better. It was pessimistic, and the more pessimistic our visitors were, the better I'd like it.
"No, it ain't in the other dome." The rat, I thought. "It wouldn't be in either dome, stupid, or the miners here before the depression woulda found it. I was wrong—it's outside somewhere, all right."
Clair sat with us now, hunched over elbows on knees, listening through her own helmet.
"So we just march around this lousy rock until we find it."