Ranjit said, "They'd just hire somebody else. I don't know as we are destroying the Rings very fast. This was the first sweeper put in orbit nine years ago, and I can't tell no difference in Ring B. There's an awful lot of stuff in the Rings. Some of the balls are solid ice, but some are just ice coated, so we melt it off and throw out the core. Some don't have ice on it, so we throw it back. We don't use hydroponics on the sweepers. We get plenty of oxygen when we take off hydrogen, so we toss a lot of solid CO_{2} overboard, too. No, we ain't taking as much from the Rings as you think. They'll get ionic motors to working, one of these days, and it won't take hardly no fuel at all." "Nevertheless, I believe--" Joachim tried to say. "You've got a hard hull, anyhow," Ranjit said, "coming out here telling me to stop when you need fuel yourself. Supposing I stopped right now. How would you get away? And what would I do? I got a bad heart. About half of it's artificial. That's why I've been living under zero G for fifteen years. I can't go back to Earth. The docs say more than four-tenths G would do for me. Before I got this job, I was living in a hulk orbiting around Titan, just waiting to pass beyond. Now I got something useful to do and something to live for. I may last till I'm 120." Henry, who had been stupidly smiling at Morna with too much intensity to follow the discussion, jerked his head around and gasped, "You, you can't stand acceleration?" Ranjit said, "Not enough to go anywhere. I got a bad heart, a very bad heart. About half of it's--" Vicenzo and Aziz, spacesuited, crowded into the compartment through the doorway in the netting. "Dis is a stickup!" Aziz announced over a loudspeaker on the chest of his suit. "Don't move," Vicenzo growled, scowling beneath his black bangs. * * * * * Since deadly weapons were extremely rare and difficult to obtain, the pair had armed themselves with long, hand-made knives. Vicenzo also carried a cumbersome rocket launcher, a remodeled lifeline tube. "Gangsters!" Ranjit wheezed. "I ain't seen a gangster in twenty years! I fought them in the Crime War! I--" "Shut up, old man," Vicenzo ordered. His sideburns twitched around his cruel mouth. "Everything fixed here, Henry?" "Are you into this, Henry?" Ranjit said. Vicenzo snarled, "I told you to shut up!" "Let me talk to you alone, Vicenzo," Henry said. "Spill it now. Is this all the crew? Did you smash communications?" "Yes," Henry admitted. "The old man is the crew. The others just came aboard." "Why didn't you fix the other ship?" Vicenzo said. "We had to clamp on, because it was blocking the valve. We came through it, and you hadn't even smashed the radio. There might've been a crew aboard, for all you knew."