He passed over his canteen. "Fill 'er up."
The plump storekeeper unscrewed the cap, cocked an eye into the opening. He shook it a little and let it gurgle. "Not much left," he said cheerfully.
"No," agreed Long.
The storekeeper trickled water in, holding the neck of the canteen close to the hose tip to avoid spillage. The volume gauge whirred. He screwed the cap back on.
Long passed over the coins and took his canteen. It clanked against his hip now with a pleasing heaviness. It would never do to visit a family without a full canteen. Among the boys, it didn't matter. Not as much, anyway.
He entered the hallway of No. 27, climbed a short flight of stairs, and paused with his thumb on the signal.
The sound of voices could be heard quite plainly.
One was a woman's voice, somewhat shrill. "It's all right for you to have your Scavenger friends here, isn't it? I'm supposed to be thankful you manage to get home two months a year. Oh, it's quite enough that you spend a day or two with me. After that, it's the Scavengers again.
"I've been home for a long time now," said a male voice, "and this is business. For Mars' sake, let up, Dora. They'll be here soon."
Long decided to wait a moment before signaling. It might give them a chance to hit a more neutral topic.
"What do I care if they come?" retorted Dora. "Let them hear me. And I'd just as soon the Commissioner kept the moratorium on permanently. You hear me?"
"And what would we live on?" came the male voice hotly. "You tell me that."
"I'll tell you. You can make a decent, honorable living right here on Mars, just like everybody else. I'm the only one in this apartment house that's a Scavenger widow. That's what I am - a widow. I'm worse than a widow, because if I were a widow, I'd at least have a chance to marry someone else - what did you say?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
"Oh, I know what you said. Now listen here, Dick Swenson - "
"I only said," cried Swenson, "that now I know why Scavengers usually don't marry."
"You shouldn't have either. I'm tired of having every person in the neighborhood pity me and smirk and ask when you're coming home. Other people can be mining engineers and administrators and even tunnel borers. At least tunnel borers' wives have a decent home life and their children don't grow up like vagabonds. Peter might as well not have a father - "
A thin boy-soprano voice made its way through the door. It was somewhat more distant, as though it were in another room. "Hey, Mom, what's a vagabond?"
Dora's voice rose a notch. "Peter! You keep your mind on your homework."
Swenson said in a low voice, "It's not right to talk this way in front of the kid. What kind of notions will he get about me?"
"Stay home then and teach him better notions."
Peter's voice called out again. "Hey, Mom, I'm going to be a Scavenger when I grow up."
Footsteps sounded rapidly. There was a momentary hiatus in the sounds, then a piercing, "Mom! Hey, Mom! Leggo my ear! What did I do?" and a snuffling silence.
Long seized the chance. He worked the signal vigorously.
Swenson opened the door, brushing down his hair with both hands.
"Hello, Ted," he said in a subdued voice. Then loudly, "Ted's here, Dora. Where's Mario, Ted?"
Long said, "He'll be here in a while."
Dora came bustling out of the next room, a small, dark woman with a pinched nose, and hair, just beginning to show touches of gray, combed off the forehead.
"Hello, Ted. Have you eaten?"
"Quite well, thanks. I haven't interrupted you, have I?"
"Not at all. We finished ages ago. Would you like some coffee?"
"I think so." Ted unslung his canteen and offered it.
"Oh, goodness, that's all right. We've plenty of water."
"I insist."
"Well then - "
Back into the kitchen she went. Through the swinging door, Long caught a glimpse of dishes sitting in Secoterg, the "waterless cleaner that soaks up and absorbs grease and dirt in a twinkling. One ounce of water will rinse eight square feet of dish surface clean as clean. Buy Secoterg. Secoterg just cleans it right, makes your dishes shiny bright, does away with water waste - "
The tune started whining through his mind and Long crushed it with speech. He said, "How's Pete?"
"Fine, fine. The kid's in the fourth grade now. You know I don't get to see him much. Well sir, when I came back last time, he looked at me and said..."
It went on for a while and wasn't too bad as bright sayings of bright children as told by dull parents go.
The door signal burped and Mario Rioz came in, frowning and red.
Swenson stepped to him quickly. "Listen, don't say anything about shell-snaring. Dora still remembers the time you fingered a Class A shell out of my territory and she's in one of her moods now."
"Who the hell wants to talk about shells?" Rioz slung off a fur-lined jacket, threw it over the back of the chair and sat down.
Dora came through the swinging door, viewed the newcomer with a synthetic smile, and said, "Hello, Mario. Coffee for you, too?".
"Yeah," he said, reaching automatically for his canteen.
"Just use some more of my water, Dora," said Long quickly. "He'll owe it to me."
"Yeah," said Rioz.
"What's wrong, Mario?" asked Long.
Rioz said heavily, "Go on. Say you told me so. A year ago when Hilder made that speech, you told me so. Say it."