Tolliver's Orbit
Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"

"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me see much else."

"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."

I'll be sorry later, he reflected, but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.

"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions from the city to the spaceport."

"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a mission?"

Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.

"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this mission!"

"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"

"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can strike like a vicious animal."

"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"

"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an unarmored tractor."

"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.

She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity, the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.

"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"

Say, that's pretty good! he told himself. What a liar you are, Tolliver!


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