From time to time, he chanced a quick look at the progress of the other two. Blair was standing now at the very edge of the scored section, guiding Dan both with words and with arm and body movements. Dan was tugging slowly, first to the left and then to the right, and gradually the meteor was being inched outward. At one point, Blair glanced over at Ricks and said, "How's it going, Ricks?" "Just dandy," said Ricks, grunting with effort. "Just fine. Almost as good as you." Blair frowned, then turned his attention back to the meteor. Half a dozen times since they'd come out here, he'd been at the point of telling Ricks to go back inside, to have Mendel send out a crewman instead. He wasn't sure what had stopped him. It wasn't the way Ricks saw it; he wasn't looking for a whipping boy, to take the blame for him if he lost the cargo. Glenn Blair didn't pass the buck, he never had and he never would. He'd been given this job in the first place because he was a man who could handle responsibility, whose pride lay in his ability to complete his own jobs, not in any ability to oversee the work of others. He had, he knew, lost the dispassionate approach necessary in his work. Ricks and the cargo for QB had both become too important to him, though in far different ways. With Ricks, he seemed somehow to have become ensnarled in some idiotic sort of contest, in which only Ricks knew the rules and the scoring, in which only Ricks could know or care who had won and who had lost. Ricks had kept him off-balance, thinking with his emotions rather than his brains. In so doing, he'd underestimated Ricks' own concern with the contest. He'd agreed to let Ricks come out here partly out of a desire to throw the guy into a situation where he would lose his own contest under his own rules, and partly out of a desire to call Ricks' bluff. It had turned out to be no bluff, and Blair, thinking with his emotions, had been unable to withdraw the agreement. And the fight with Mendel had only served to harden the cement. Mendel had been instantly and loudly opposed to Ricks going outside, and Blair had responded just as quickly and just as loudly. Mendel's opposition had finally only intensified Blair's determination to go through with it. Outside, he had had no choice but to put Ricks to work. There were only the two of them out there, and both were needed. He'd kept for himself the intricate job of guiding the removal of the meteor--the reep pilot was too far back and too involved with the operation of his ship's controls to be able to do the job by himself--but that had left for Ricks the scarcely-less intricate job of holding onto the replacement panel. Blair had kept an eye on him throughout, ready to step in if it looked as though Ricks would lose control, but Ricks had done surprisingly well, after bobbling the ball a bit to begin with.