d,
trying not to float up to the ceiling.

* * * * *

The Mapping & Registry Office, it seemed to me the next day, was the
best place to start. This was where prospectors filed their claims, but
it was a lot more than that. The waiting room of M&R was the unofficial
club of the asteroid prospectors. This is where they met with one
another, talked together about the things that prospectors discuss, and
made and dissolved their transient partnerships.

In this way, Karpin and McCann were unusual. They had maintained their
partnership for fifteen years. That was about sixty times longer than
most such arrangements lasted.

Searching the asteroid chunks for rare and valuable metals is basically
pretty lonely work, and it's inevitable that the prospectors will every
once in a while get hungry for human company and decide to try a team
operation. But, at the same time, work like this attracts people who
don't get along very well with human company. So the partnerships come
and go, and the hatreds flare and are forgotten, and the normal
prospecting team lasts an average of three months.

At any rate, it was to the Mapping & Registry Office that I went first.
And, since that office was up on the first level, I went by elevator.

Riding _up_ in that elevator was a heck of a lot more fun than riding
down. The elevator whipped up like mad, the floor pressed against the
soles of my feet, and it felt almost like good old Earth for a second or
two there. But then the elevator stopped, and I held on tight to the
hand-grips to keep from shooting through the top of the blasted thing.

The operator--a phlegmatic sort--gave me directions to the M&R, and off
I went, still trying to figure out how to sail along as gracefully as
the locals.

The Mapping & Registry Office occupied a good-sized shack over near the
dome wall, next to the entry lock. I pushed open the door and went on
in.

The waiting room was cozy and surprisingly large, large enough to
comfortably hold the six maroon leather sofas scattered here and there
on the pale green carpet, flanked by bronze ashtray stands. There were
only six prospectors here at the moment, chatting together in two groups
of three, and they all looked alike. Grizzled, ageless, watery-eyed,
their clothing clean but baggy. I passed them and went on to the desk at
the far end, behind which sat a young man in official gray, slowly
turning the crank of a microfilm r