The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®. Randall Garrett

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СКАЧАТЬ was sorry for what he had done—really and truly sorry. If they’d only give him one more chance, he’d make good. Just one more chance. He’d work things out.

      He’d promised himself that both times they’d put him up before, but things had been different then. He hadn’t really been given another chance, what with parole boards and all.

      Clayton closed his eyes and finished the beer. He ordered another.

      He’d worked in the mines for fifteen years. It wasn’t that he minded work really, but the foreman had it in for him. Always giving him a bad time; always picking out the lousy jobs for him.

      Like the time he’d crawled into a side-boring in Tunnel 12 for a nap during lunch and the foreman had caught him. When he promised never to do it again if the foreman wouldn’t put it on report, the guy said, “Yeah. Sure. Hate to hurt a guy’s record.”

      Then he’d put Clayton on report anyway. Strictly a rat.

      Not that Clayton ran any chance of being fired; they never fired anybody. But they’d fined him a day’s pay. A whole day’s pay.

      He tapped his glass on the bar, and the barman came over with another beer. Clayton looked at it, then up at the barman. “Put a head on it.”

      The bartender looked at him sourly. “I’ve got some soapsuds here, Clayton, and one of these days I’m gonna put some in your beer if you keep pulling that gag.”

      That was the trouble with some guys. No sense of humor.

      Somebody came in the door and then somebody else came in behind him, so that both inner and outer doors were open for an instant. A blast of icy breeze struck Clayton’s back, and he shivered. He started to say something, then changed his mind; the doors were already closed again, and besides, one of the guys was bigger than he was.

      The iciness didn’t seem to go away immediately. It was like the mine. Little old Mars was cold clear down to her core—or at least down as far as they’d drilled. The walls were frozen and seemed to radiate a chill that pulled the heat right out of your blood.

      Somebody was playing Green Hills again, damn them. Evidently all of his own selections had run out earlier than he’d thought they would.

      Hell! There was nothing to do here. He might as well go home.

      “Gimme another beer, Mac.”

      He’d go home as soon as he finished this one.

      He stood there with his eyes closed, listening to the music and hating Mars.

      A voice next to him said: “I’ll have a whiskey.”

      * * * *

      The voice sounded as if the man had a bad cold, and Clayton turned slowly to look at him. After all the sterilization they went through before they left Earth, nobody on Mars ever had a cold, so there was only one thing that would make a man’s voice sound like that.

      Clayton was right. The fellow had an oxygen tube clamped firmly over his nose. He was wearing the uniform of the Space Transport Service.

      “Just get in on the ship?” Clayton asked conversationally.

      The man nodded and grinned. “Yeah. Four hours before we take off again.” He poured down the whiskey. “Sure cold out.”

      Clayton agreed. “It’s always cold.” He watched enviously as the spaceman ordered another whiskey.

      Clayton couldn’t afford whiskey. He probably could have by this time, if the mines had made him a foreman, like they should have.

      Maybe he could talk the spaceman out of a couple of drinks.

      “My name’s Clayton. Ron Clayton.”

      The spaceman took the offered hand. “Mine’s Parkinson, but everybody calls me Parks.”

      “Sure, Parks. Uh—can I buy you a beer?”

      Parks shook his head. “No, thanks. I started on whiskey. Here, let me buy you one.”

      “Well—thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”

      They drank them in silence, and Parks ordered two more.

      “Been here long?” Parks asked.

      “Fifteen years. Fifteen long, long years.”

      “Did you—uh—I mean—” Parks looked suddenly confused.

      Clayton glanced quickly to make sure the bartender was out of earshot. Then he grinned. “You mean am I a convict? Nah. I came here because I wanted to. But—” He lowered his voice. “—we don’t talk about it around here. You know.” He gestured with one hand—a gesture that took in everyone else in the room.

      Parks glanced around quickly, moving only his eyes. “Yeah. I see,” he said softly.

      “This your first trip?” asked Clayton.

      “First one to Mars. Been on the Luna run a long time.”

      “Low pressure bother you much?”

      “Not much. We only keep it at six pounds in the ships. Half helium and half oxygen. Only thing that bothers me is the oxy here. Or rather, the oxy that isn’t here.” He took a deep breath through his nose tube to emphasize his point.

      Clayton clamped his teeth together, making the muscles at the side of his jaw stand out.

      Parks didn’t notice. “You guys have to take those pills, don’t you?”

      “Yeah.”

      “I had to take them once. Got stranded on Luna. The cat I was in broke down eighty some miles from Aristarchus Base and I had to walk back—with my oxy low. Well, I figured—”

      Clayton listened to Parks’ story with a great show of attention, but he had heard it before. This “lost on the moon” stuff and its variations had been going the rounds for forty years. Every once in a while, it actually did happen to someone; just often enough to keep the story going.

      This guy did have a couple of new twists, but not enough to make the story worthwhile.

      “Boy,” Clayton said when Parks had finished, “you were lucky to come out of that alive!”

      Parks nodded, well pleased with himself, and bought another round of drinks.

      “Something like that happened to me a couple of years ago,” Clayton began. “I’m supervisor on the third shift in the mines at Xanthe, but at the time, I was only a foreman. One day, a couple of guys went to a branch tunnel to—”

      It was a very good story. Clayton had made it up himself, so he knew that Parks had never heard it before. It was gory in just the right places, with a nice effect at the end.

      “—so I had to hold up the rocks with my back while the rescue crew pulled the others out of the tunnel by crawling between СКАЧАТЬ