"When we land he's under your probationary control for the first five
days of Earth leave. It's up to you to teach him how to stay in line."
He rubbed his brush mustache thoughtfully. "To begin with, though, it
might be good to take him along to Analysis Lab just to show him how
wrong he probably is even about the specimens. Any objections to that,
Mister?"
"No sir!" he said, more hopeful now of exposing Hartley.
"A very good idea, sir," Hartley nodded unexpectedly.
They proceeded two hundred yards toward the stern where the Specimen
Analysis Laboratory was located. In one long room there was a row of
totally automatic equipment for both deepfreeze and normal temperature
breakdowns. Sommers, the chief chemist, set the specimen box in a
large, sealed chamber with one transparent side. When the inside
temperature matched that within the box itself fine robot fingers
unlocked it, withdrew samples and shifted them toward various test
compartments. Meanwhile, Chisholm explained about the crystal cloud to
the chemist.
"That must have been an exceptional batch," Sommers said, as he studied
the response dial. "_Very_ little moisture here. Nothing important to
that one way or the other, though. Matter of fact, nothing important to
these specimens in general--usual asteroid run."
Hartley impassively considered the shocked expression on Cramer's face.
"Confined to quarters for the rest of the voyage," snapped the General,
turning his back on the miscreant.
* * * * *
As Hartley led his ward to scout quarters, he kept shaking his head.
"Shouldn't make trouble like that, Cramer. See where it gets you? I
can't get ahead in this man's service so how far do you think _you_ can
go?"
"But you didn't tell him the most important thing. And the material in
the lab didn't give off _any_ whiteness even when its temperature was
raised. I don't think you put in any new chips the third time you went
out--I think you're trying to hide something!"
"Sure, right here." He pulled a pocket inside out. A few tobacco shreds
were clinging to the lining. "Go ahead, tell them more and you'll keep
getting into deeper trouble. Nobody will believe you anyway."
They stopped by the Recreation Room entrance to watch a foursome at
ping pong. It was a good game, requiring special skill since the
artificial gravity of the dreadnought-class craft varied slightly from
that of Earth, "Come along," Hartley said finally, "no human company
for you until touchdown. When we're on _terra firma_ I'll show you how
silly you've been and you can get in on the ground floor for something
really big."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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