used to memorize Keats, Frost,
Shakespeare."

They were there in the dining room. She brightened a little. "I
remember--some."

"Do you remember clouds, the sound of water? Trees, grass...?"

She actually smiled, wistfully. "Yes. Sunday afternoons. A blue dress.
My mother when she was alive... A dog I had, once..."

Helen Rodan wasn't quite a zombie, after all. Maybe he could win her
confidence, if he went slow...

But twenty hours later, at the diggings, when Dutch stumbled over
Frank's sifter, she reverted. "I'll learn you to leave junk in my way,
you greenhorn squirt!" Dutch shouted. Then he tossed Frank thirty feet.
Frank came back, kicked him in his thinly armored stomach, knocked him
down, and tried to get his gun. But Dutch grabbed him in those big arms.
Helen was also pointing a small pistol at him.

She was trembling. "Dad will handle this," she said.

Rodan came over. "You don't have much choice, do you, Nelsen?" he
sneered. "However, perhaps Dutch was crude. I apologize for him. And I
will deduct a hundred dollars from his pay, and give it to you."

"Much obliged," Frank said dryly.

After that, everything happened to build his tensions to the breaking
point.

At a work period's end, near the lunar noon, he heard a voice in his
helmet-phone. "Frank--this is Two-and-Two...! Why don't you ever call or
answer...?"

Two-and-Two's usually plaintive voice had a special quality, as if he
was maybe in trouble. This time, Frank got a directional fix, adjusted
his antenna, and called, "Hey, Two-and-Two...! Hey, Pal--it's me--Frank
Nelsen...!"

Venus was in the sky, not too close to the sun. But still, though Nelsen
called repeatedly, there was no reply.

He got back to quarters, and looked over not only his radio but his
entire Archer. The radio had been fiddled with, delicately; it would
still work, but not in a narrow enough beam to reach millions of miles,
or even five hundred. An intricate focusing device had been removed from
a wave guide.

That wasn't the worst that was wrong with the Archer. The small nuclear
battery which energized the moisture-reclaimer, the heating units, and
especially the air-restorer--not only for turning its pumps but for
providing the intense internal illumination necessary to promote the
release of oxygen in the photosynthetic process of the chlorophane when
there was no sun--had been replaced by a chemical battery of a far
smaller active life-span! The armor locker!