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tested yielded any trace of the crystals all men coveted. And, once in a donkeyship in the Rings, there was no backing out. There was nowhere to go until another pickup ship arrived. The bedlam here and now was proof enough of the intolerable strain of life in a donkeyship in the Rings. But for men there was the bright and shining hope concerning the Big Rock Candy Mountain. That was at once a dream which kept men from suicidal despair, and—since Dunne was suspected of finding it—made this the worst of all possible times for Keyes’ sister to come up as a problem. When they were suspected of such infinite good fortune, the only place for her was somewhere else. Anywhere else!
    A grizzled spaceman came and sat beside Dunne. Dunne knew him. His name was Smithers and he was considered slightly cracked. He was the only donkeyship man in the Rings who habitually worked alone. He’d had a partner, and the partner disappeared; and from that time on, Smithers protested vociferously that his partner had been killed by gooks and that ultimately he’d avenge him. He talked about gooks—to anybody who’d listen, and probably between pickup ships he talked to himself.
    “They’re calmin’ down now,” confided the grizzled man of the revelers about them. “They acted crazy at the beginnin’, but they’re calmin’ down now.”
    Dunne nodded. He was inclined to grind his teeth because of his own folly. He’d given his order for oxygen and foodstuffs and mining supplies. His order was being made ready. Similar orders would be delivered to each donkeyship team, in the order of their arrival and delivery of their accumulation of crystals. Now Dunne had to wait his turn to receive them. But he’d become an object of suspicion. He was suspected of having found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was senseless. But it was very dangerous! Lonely, isolated men were apt to be cranks. This grizzled character was an example.
    “Have y’heard,” he demanded of Dunne, “that there was gooks sighted down yonder? Fella named Sam. told me so last pickup ship time. He heard ’em first. Their drive don’t make a whine like a human drive does. It goes tweet… tweet… tweet instead.” He nodded portentously. “This fella Sam heard it. An’ then he saw a gook ship. It come for him. He lit out an’ lost it. But it was a gook ship!”
    Then Smithers said, more portentously and more ominously still, “And Sam ain’t back this trip. He was here last time. He ain’t here this time. Somethin’ got him! It was gooks! We got to do somethin’ about gooks!”
    Dunne shook his head, not paying attention. It was wholly likely that somebody’d been joking with Smithers, and Smithers didn’t see it. There had always been rumors of gooks in the Rings. The word meant something like “ghost.” Communicators occasionally picked up noises for which there was no explanation, but it did not follow that there must be alien entities to make them. Gooks were supposed to be inhabitants of the planet Thothmes, and some people believed that they’d made space-ships and came sneaking about the Rings, spying on humans and on occasion sniping them. But the evidence for them wasn’t good.
    A world suitable for life to develop has to have heavy elements and rocks and metal compounds to provide the raw material for living things to be made of. But Thothmes, if one judged by its gravitational field, was not nearly as heavy as a same-sized globe of water. That ruled out the possibility of gooks. And it was believed that if there were a solid center under Thothmes’ turbulent veil of clouds, it must be frozen gas-ice or perhaps methane or ammonia. And life couldn’t originate or continue there!
    The grizzled Smithers went on with sudden passion: “You listen here! You found the Big Rock Candy Mountain! Maybe you think you goin’ to keep it secret! Maybe you left Keyes behind on it to keep anybody else from minin’ it. But there’s gooks goin’ around,