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But there were evidently no bluenoses here. “Perfectly all right, Mr. Oak,” the blond young man said affably. Then he coughed politely and added: “But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take off the gun.”

I glanced at the holster under my armpit, walked back over to the locker, opened it, and took out my vac suit.

“Hey!” said the blond young man. “Where are you going?”

“Back to my boat,” I said calmly. “I’m getting tired of this runaround already. I’m a professional man, not a hired flunky. If you’d called a doctor, you wouldn’t tell him to leave his little black bag behind; if you’d called a lawyer, you wouldn’t make him check his brief case. Or, if you did, he’d tell you to drop dead.

“I was asked to come here as fast as possible, and when I do, I’m told to wait till tomorrow. Now you want me to check my gun. The hell with you.”

“Merely a safety precaution,” said the blond young man worriedly.

“You think I’m going to shoot Ravenhurst, maybe? Don’t be an idiot.” I started climbing into my vac suit.

“Just a minute, please, Mr. Oak,” said a voice from a hidden speaker. It was Ravenhurst, and he actually sounded apologetic. “You mustn’t blame Mr. Feller; those are my standing orders, and I failed to tell Mr. Feller to make an exception in your case. The error was mine.”

“I know,” I said. “I wasn’t blaming Mr. Feller. I wasn’t even talking to him. I was addressing you.”

“I believe you. Mr. Feller, our guest has gone to all the trouble of having a suit made with a space under the arm for that gun; I see no reason to make him remove it.” A pause. “Again, Mr. Oak, I apologize. I really want you to take this job.”

I was already taking off the vac suit again.

“But,” Ravenhurst continued smoothly, “if I fail to live up to your ideas of courtesy again, I hope you’ll forgive me in advance. I’m sometimes very forgetful, and I don’t like it when a man threatens to leave my employ twice in the space of fifteen minutes.”

“I’m not in your employ yet, Ravenhurst,” I said. “If I accept the job, I won’t threaten to quit again unless I mean to carry it through, and it would take a lot more than common discourtesy to make me do that. On the other hand, your brand of discourtesy is a shade above the common.”

“I thank you for that, at least,” said Ravenhurst. “Show him to my office, Mr. Feller.”

The blond young man nodded wordlessly and led me from the room.

* * * * *

Walking under low-gee conditions is like nothing else in this universe. I don’t mean trotting around on Luna; one-sixth gee is practically homelike in comparison. And zero gee is so devoid of orientation that it gives the sensation of falling endlessly until you get used to it. But a planetoid is in a different class altogether.

Remember that dream–almost everybody’s had it–where you’re suddenly able to fly? It isn’t flying exactly; it’s a sort of swimming in the air. Like being underwater, except that the medium around you isn’t so dense and viscous, and you can breathe. Remember? Well, that’s the feeling you get on a low-gee planetoid.

Your arms don’t tend to hang at your sides, as they do on Earth or Luna, because the muscular tension tends to hold them out, just as it does in zero-gee, but there is still a definite sensation of up-and-down. If you push yourself off the floor, you tend to float in a long, slow, graceful arc, provided you don’t push too hard. Magnetic soles are practically a must.

I followed the blond Mr. Feller down a series of long corridors which had been painted a pale green, which gave me the feeling that I was underwater. There were doors spaced at intervals along the corridor walls. Occasionally one of them would open and a busy looking man would cross the corridor, open another door, and disappear. From behind the doors, I could hear the drum of distant sounds.