an outpost, useful as a mining station, as an observatory, as a refueling stop beyond the densest portion of Terra's gravitational field.
Venus is a colony. The colonists breathe the air of Venus, eat its food, and expose their skins to its climate and natural hazards. Only the cold polar regions – approximately equivalent in weather conditions to an Amazonian jungle on a hot day in the rainy season – are tenable by terrestrials, but here they slop barefooted on the marshy soil in a true ecological balance.
Wingate ate the meal that was offered him – satisfactory but roughly served and dull, except for Venus sweet- sour melon, the portion of which he ate would have fetched a price in a Chicago gourmets' restaurant equivalent to the food budget for a week of a middle-class family – and located his assigned sleeping billet. Thereafter he attempted to locate Sam Houston Jones. He could find no sign of him among the other labor clients, nor any one who remembered having seen him. He was advised by one of the permanent staff of the conditioning station to enquire of the factor's clerk. This he did, in the ingratiating manner he had learned it was wise to use in dealing with minor functionaries.
«Come back in the morning. The lists will be posted.»
«Thank you, sir. Sorry to have bothered you, but I can't find him and I was afraid he might have taken sick or something. Could you tell me if he is on the sick list?»
«Oh, well – Wait a minute.» The clerk thumbed through his records. «Hmmm ... you say he was in the
«Yes, sir.»
«Well, he's not ... Mmmm, no – Oh, yes, here he is. He didn't disembark here.»
«What did you say?»
«He went on with the
After a moment Wingate pulled himself together enough to murmur, «Thanks for your trouble.»
» 'S all right. Don't mention it.» The clerk turned away.
South Pole Colony! He muttered it to himself. South Pole Colony, his only friend twelve thousand miles away. At last Wingate felt alone, alone and trapped, abandoned. During the short interval between waking up aboard the transport and finding Jones also aboard he had not had time fully to appreciate his predicament, nor had he, then, lost his upper class arrogance, the innate conviction that it could not be serious – such things just don't happen to people, not to people one
But in the meantime he had suffered such assaults to his human dignity (the Chief Master-at-Arms had seen to some of it) that he was no longer certain of his essential inviolability from unjust or arbitrary treatment. But now, shaved and bathed without his consent, stripped of his clothing and attired in a harnesslike breechclout, transported millions of miles from his social matrix, subject to the orders of persons indifferent to his feelings and who claimed legal control over his person and actions, and now, most bitterly, cut off from the one human contact which had given him support and courage and hope, he realized at last with chilling thoroughness that anything could happen to him, to
«Wingate!»
«That's you, Jack. Go on in, don't keep them waiting.» Wingate pushed through the doorway and found himself in a fairly crowded room. Thirty-odd men were seated around the sides of the room. Near the door a clerk sat at a desk, busy with papers. One brisk-mannered individual stood in the cleared space between the chairs near a low platform on which all the illumination of the room was concentrated. The clerk at the door looked up to say, «Step up where they can see you.» He pointed a stylus at the platform.
Wingate moved forward and did as he was bade, blinking at the brilliant light. «Contract number 482-23-06,» read the clerk, «client Humphrey Wingate, six years, radio technician non-certified, pay grade six-D, contract now available for assignment.» Three weeks it had taken them to condition him, three weeks with no word from Jones. He had passed his exposure test without infection; he was about to enter the active period of his indenture. The brisk man spoke up close on the last words of the clerk:
«Now here, patrons, if you please – we have an exceptionally promising man. I hardly dare tell you the ratings he received on his intelligence, adaptability, and general information tests. In fact I won't, except to tell you that Administration has put in a protective offer of a thousand credits. But it would be a shame to use any such client for the routine work of administration when we need good men so badly to wrest wealth from the wilderness. I venture to predict that the lucky bidder who obtains the services of this client will be using him as a foreman within a month. But look him over for yourselves, talk to him, and see for yourselves.»
The clerk whispered something to the speaker. He nodded and added, «I am required to notify you, gentlemen and patrons, that this client has given the usual legal notice of two weeks, subject of course to liens of record.» He laughed jovially, and cocked one eyebrow as if there were some huge joke behind his remarks. No one paid attention to the announcement; to a limited extent Wingate appreciated wryly the nature of the jest. He had given notice the day after he found out that Jones had been sent to South Pole Colony, and had discovered that while he was free theoretically to quit, it was freedom to starve on Venus, unless he first worked out his bounty, and his passage both ways.
Several of the patrons gathered around the platform and looked him over, discussing him as they did so. «Not too well muscled.» «I'm not overeager to bid on these smart boys; they're trouble-makers.» «No, but a stupid client isn't worth his keep.» «What can he
«I'm not interested in those phony puff-sheets, bub. Tell me about yourself.»
«There's not much to tell.»
«Loosen up. You'll like my place. Just like a home – I run a free crock to Venusburg for my boys. Had any experience handling niggers?»
«No.»
«Well, the natives ain't niggers anyhow, except in a manner of speaking. You look like you could boss a gang. Had any experience?»
«Not much.»
«Well ... maybe you're modest. I like a man who keeps his mouth shut. And my boys like me. I never let my pusher take kickbacks.»
«No,» put in another patron who had returned to the side of the platform, «you save that for yourself, Rigsbee.»
«You stay out o' this, Van Huysen!»
The newcomer, a heavy-set, middle-aged man, ignored the other and addressed Wingate himself. «You have given notice. Why?»
«The whole thing was a mistake. I was drunk.»
«Will you do honest work in the meantime?»
Wingate considered this. «Yes,» he said finally. The heavy-set man nodded and walked heavily back to his chair, settling his broad girth with care and giving his harness a hitch.
When the others were seated the spokesman announced cheerfully, «Now, gentlemen, if you are quite through – Let's hear an opening offer for this contract. I wish I could afford to bid him in as my assistant, by George, I do! Now ... do I hear an offer?» «Six hundred.»
«Please, patrons! Did you not hear me mention a protection of one thousand?»
«I don't think you mean it. He's a sleeper.» The company agent raised his eyebrows. «I'm sorry. I'll have to ask the client to step down from the platform.»
But before Wingate could do so another voice said, «One thousand.»
«Now that's better!» exclaimed the agent. «I should have known that you gentlemen wouldn't let a real opportunity escape you. But a ship can't fly on one jet. Do I hear eleven hundred? Come, patrons, you can't make your fortunes without clients. Do I hear – « «Eleven hundred.»
«Eleven hundred from Patron Rigsbee! And a bargain it would be at that price. But I doubt if you will get it. Do
