"I'm not. And it isn't your pearly white skin I'm worried about, it's my pearly white Station. If we have one Section in vacuum, we'll have trouble enough keeping equilibrium. With two Sections out of whack, we'll wobble all over the damn Solar System." "Irv, my whole cargo's in there! The cargo for QB is in there!" "I can't help it. Besides, vacuum won't hurt that stuff for QB." "Irv, if there's a break through the inner hull, and that meteor shakes loose, the QB cargo won't be _in_ the Station any more, it'll be scattered halfway from here to Mars. Did you ever see stuff come flying out of a room that goes suddenly to vacuum?" "Yes, I did. Did you ever see a _man_ that's gone suddenly to vacuum?" "Irv, look at your blasted pressure gauge!" "It's down." "It's down less than half a point, Irv, and that's because you've stopped pumping air in there. Listen, that QB cargo isn't hermetically sealed. If it doesn't get good air, it can rot." "It can rot right now, for all of me. I'm not touching Section Five or anything in it. We'll get in touch with QB, and let them send a couple of reeps up here. It's their job, not ours." "Irv, don't you realize what that cargo means to the boys at QB?" "Sure, I do. But do _you_ realize what this Station here means to _me_? The boys at QB can re-order another batch. I can't go out and re-order another Station." "Irv, listen. The ground-pounders don't realize how important that stuff is. Without it, the crew at QB will be at each other's throats in a month. This is no exaggeration, Irv, the whole QB operation will fall apart within a month. And if QB falls apart, the whole system falls apart, because it's QB's job to run maintenance for the rest of us." "I know that," said Mendel, "I know it well. Every word you say is absolutely true. But I still say they can re-order." "And _I_ say it'll take three months at the very least to fill the new order! We can't even put the order in until we can prove to the ground-pounders' satisfaction that this batch is destroyed, and we won't be able to do that till the reeps get here and patch the hole. So that's ten or fifteen days right there. Then they'll fool around another half a month or more, figuring out costs and tax breaks and whatnot, wanting to know why QB can't make do till the next regular shipment, and bogging down in a lot of red tape. Then they have to put the order in, out of sequence, so it'll take longer to fill it. And every single item has to be double-checked and approved by the psycho department and half a dozen other departments. It'll be _more_ than three months!" Mendel doggedly shook his head. "I'm not going to argue with you, Glenn," he said, "I'm going to tell you. That cargo is your responsibility, but this whole Station is mine, and I'm not going to risk this Station for you or QB or anybody. Period, finish, end of discussion. Now, I'm going to go on up and call QB and have them send us a couple of reeps. Want to come along?"