eader.

He looked up at my approach. I flashed my company identification and
asked to speak to the manager. He went away, came back, and ushered me
into an office which managed to be Spartan and sumptuous at the same
time. The walls had been plastic-painted in textured brown, the iron
floor had been lushly carpeted in gray, and the desk had been covered
with a simulated wood coating.

The manager--a man named Teaking--went well with the office. His face
and hands were spare and lean, but his uniform was immaculate, covered
with every curlicue the regulations allowed. He welcomed me politely,
but curiously, and I said, "I wonder if you know a prospector named Ab
Karpin?"

"Karpin? Of course. He and old Jafe McCann--pity about McCann. I hear he
got killed."

"Yes, he did."

"And that's what you're here for, eh?" He nodded sagely. "I didn't know
the Belt boys could get insurance," he said.

"It isn't exactly that," I said. "This concerns a retirement plan,
and--well, the details don't matter." Which, I hoped, would end his
curiosity in that line. "I was hoping you could give me some background
on Karpin. And on McCann, too, for that matter."

He grinned a bit. "You saw the men sitting outside?"

I nodded.

"Then you've seen Karpin and McCann. Exactly the same. It doesn't matter
if a man's thirty or sixty or what. It doesn't matter what he was like
before he came out here. If he's been here a few years, he looks exactly
like the bunch you saw outside there."

"That's appearance," I said. "What I was looking for was personality."

"Same thing," he said. "All of them. Close-mouthed, anti-social,
fiercely independent, incurably romantic, always convinced that the big
strike is just a piece of rock away. McCann, now, he was a bit more
realistic than most. He'd be the one I'd expect to take out a retirement
policy. A real pence-pincher, that one, though I shouldn't say it as
he's dead. But that's the way he was. Brighter than most Belt boys when
it came to money matters. I've seen him haggle over a new piece of
equipment for their scooter, or some repair work, or some such thing,
and he was a wonder to watch."

"And Karpin?" I asked him.

"A prospector," he said, as though that answered my question. "Same as
everybody else. Not as sharp as McCann when it came to money. That's why
all the money stuff in the partnership was handled by McCann. But Karpin
was one of the sharpest boys in the business when it came to