John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel by John Maddox Roberts

Torwald set the cutters on mounts while Popov scribed lines on the now fiat-surfaced outcropping, using Bert's templates. The slabs were to be cut ten centimeters thick and fifty on a side, rectangular, except for those that were to fit the circular walls of the hold. Each slab weighed nearly twenty kilos, and wrestling them onto the pow-erbarrows for the ride to the hold was rough work. Ham and Achmed tried to rig up a suction crane to make the loading easier, but the unstable surface of the hillside made it impracticable. Muscle labor was the only answer.
    After ten hours of continuous work, everyone was bone-tired, but still stimulated by the prospect of the wealth this voyage would bring.
    "Quitting time," Torwald announced suddenly. "Everybody back to the ship—everybody, that is, except you two." He pointed at Kelly and Lafayette. "You get to clean up the site and make sure everything is ready for us to start work in the morning." Both groaned.
    When the others had left, Kelly and Lafayette got up from where they had been leaning against a rock and brushed the seats of their coveralls. They began sweeping up and loading the dross into the power-barrow to be hauled away and dumped.
    "Hurry it up, kid," said Lafayette. "I'm getting hungry."
    Kelly stopped what he was doing. "We're not on the ship now."
    "So?"
    "I have to take that kind of treatment from you on the ship, but down here I'm not taking it. -Back in the State homes, I had to put up with a lot from the dorm chiefs because they had authority backing them up. But they didn't try to pull any of that stuff on me out on the street. They knew better. You'd better learn better, too."
    "Oh? What do you propose to do about it?" He placed his palm on Kelly's chest and began to shove, but he had barely touched Kelly when he caught a roundhouse punch to his jaw. The redhead went down and skidded away downslope.
    "You've been riding me long enough, Lafayette."
    "I'm disappointed in you, kid." Lafayette wiped his mouth, then glanced briefly at the smear of blood left on the back of his hand. "I thought you were coming along pretty well. Now it looks like you've got to be put in your place again." He got up, dusted himself off and charged. Kelly sidestepped and tripped him, then jumped on his back and tried for a stranglehold. He missed his grip, felt Lafayette's hands get him behind the neck, and found himself tumbling through the in until he landed on his back with the redhead on top. Kelly saw stars as he caught what he presumed to be two swift punches to the face, then he got a hand under Lafayette's chin, forcing his head back and thrusting the stiff fingers of the other hand into his throat.
    Lafayette fell away, gagging, and Kelly took the opportunity to push him over on his back and drop a handful of sand into his open mouth. He found, however, that Lafayette wasn't as helpless as he seemed. I he older boy threw a double kick into his stomach with both space boots. Kelly flew back, coming up short against the crystal outcrop, his head banging into the unyielding surface. He slid downward until he was in a sitting position. When he caught his breath, he saw that Lafayette was sitting up, spitting the last of the sand-and-blood mixture from ids mouth. Kelly derived a qualified satisfaction from the sight. Qualified, because he wasn't feeling much better.
    "Had enough, Kelly?"
    "What do you mean? You look worse than me."
    "I guess I do," Lafayette admitted with a rueful smile. The smile hurt, so he stopped. "Shall we call a truce for a while, kid?"
    "No truce. You stop riding me, on or off the ship, or we do this every time we're off-ship together. If you can't live with those conditions, we can have at it again, right now."
    "All right," Lafayette said after a pause, "it's a deal. Now, let's finish up here."
    On board, the others raised some eyebrows as the unkempt duo entered the mess. "What happened to you two?" the skipper asked.
    "We fell down the stairs," Lafayette