"You'll what? You'll make a mess of things just like you always have.
You'll get me into more trouble, just like you got me into this. You're
no good, Lloyd, and I wish I'd never seen you. I wish I'd never come to
say good-bye!" She rushed to the window and began to pound on it again,
this time with her fists.
Durham hauled her away and shook her until her jaw rattled together.
"I'm sorry you came too," he said savagely. "You're the last person in
the galaxy I'd pick to be in trouble with. A damned spoiled female with
no honesty, no courage, no nothing but your father's position to trade
on." He wrapped his arms tight around her. "Hell, this is no time to be
quarrelling. Let's both keep our mouths shut. Come on, honey, we're not
dead yet."
She choked a little, and stood trembling against him. Then she said,
"I think I fell over a chair a while ago. Maybe there's a lamp. Let's
look."
The green light was dim, but their eyes were used to it. They found a
lamp and turned it on. The box was flooded with a clear white glare,
very grateful to Earthly senses. Durham looked around and said slowly,
"I'll be damned."
The box was about the size of a small room. It had in it an armchair,
a bunk, compact cupboards and lockers, a sink and hotplate, and a
curtained-off corner with a sanitary device. Durham turned on one of
the sink taps. Water came out. He turned it off and went and sat down
in the armchair.
"I'm damned," he said again.
"Freezer," said Susan, looking into things. "Food concentrates. Pots
and pans. Blanket. Change of clothes--all men's. Booze, two bottles of
it. Rack of microbooks. Somebody went to a lot of trouble."
"Yes."
"Pretty comfortable. Everything you need, all self-contained."
"Uh."
"But Lloyd--it's only for one."
He said dismally, "We'll take turns on the bunk." But it wasn't the
bunk that worried him. He went and looked out of the other window. By
craning his head he could see an assembly of storage tanks, pressure
tanks, pumps, purifiers, blower units, all tightly sealed against any
admixture of Senyan air. That, too, was only for one. A most ghastly
claustrophobia came over Durham, and for a moment he saw Susan, not as
a spoiled and pretty girl, but as his rival for the oxygen that was
life.
Susan said, "Lloyd. Something is coming in."
For an instant he thought she meant into the box, and then he realized
that the reverberating clang he heard must be the hatch door of the
hold. He joined her at the opposite window.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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