“Are you sure it’s a good one?”
“You know you can take my mechanical ability for granted,” Morley said testily. “I’ve examined the rocket engine, wiring, controls, every life-protect system, everything, completely.” He pushed the last jar of marmalade away in the storage area and shut the door firmly.
She arrived a few minutes later, slender and tanned in her khaki shirt, shorts and sandals. “Well,” she said, surveying the Morbid Chicken, “it looks rundown to me. But if you say it’s okay it is, I guess.”
“I’ve already begun loading,” Morley said.
“With what?”
Opening the door of the storage compartment he showed her the ten jars of marmalade.
After a long pause Mary said, “Christ.”
“What’s the matter?”
“You haven’t been checking the wiring and the engine. You’ve been out scrounging up all the goddam marmalade you could talk them out of.” She slammed the storage area door shut with venomous ire. “Sometimes I think you’re insane. Our lives depend on this goddam noser working. Suppose the oxygen system fails or the heat circuit fails or there’re microscopic leaks in the hull. Or—”
“Get your brother to look at it,” he interrupted. “Since you have so much more trust in him than you do in me.”
“He’s busy. You know that.”
“Or he’d be here,” Morley said, “picking out which noser for us to take. Rather than me.”
His wife eyed him intently, her spare body drawn up in a vigorous posture of defiance. Then, all at once, she sagged in what appeared to be half-amused resignation. “The strange thing is,” she said, “that you have such good luck—I mean in relation to your talents. This probably is the best noser here. But not because you can tell the difference but because of your mutant-like luck.”
“It’s not luck. It’s judgment.”
“No,” Mary said, shaking her head. “That’s the last thing it is. You have no judgment—not in the usual sense, anyhow. But what the hell. We’ll take this noser and hope your luck is holding as well as usual. But how can you live like this, Seth?” She gazed up plaintively into his face. “It’s not fair to me.”