It was a sixty-hour trip from Ganymede to Mars. Each hour was a bit more trying than the one before.
One of the hardest jobs in this business is to justify your standard of living. The financial rewards are large and the hours involved are small. It is patent that a man who has not been granted a large inheritance, or perhaps stumbled on a lucrative asteroid, cannot live in a semi-royal manner without having to work in a semi-royal fury. One of the great risks in this business is the accepting of a recruit whose appearance causes discussion. The day when a man can build a fifty thousand dollar home on a five thousand dollar salary without causing more than a raised eyebrow is gone. If a man has a large income, he must appear busy enough to warrant it—or at least provide a reasonable facsimile
Farradyne blinked. His impulse was to ask in turn why they had become hellflower operators. He stifled the impulse because there was something strangely odd about this set-up. Her question was quite normal to the background she appeared to fill as matron of a happy, successful family.
The aura of respectability extended far, to include the home and its spacious grounds, so that Farradyne burned with resentment at the social structure whereby he, who had committed no more than a few misdemeanors, should be less cultured, less successful, less poised than this family of low-grade vultures. If anything, the attitude of Mrs. Niles shocked him more than the acts of her husband. Men were the part of the race that played the rough games and ran up the score while women occupied one of two positions: they were either patterned after Farradyne's mother or they were slatterns and sluts who looked as well as acted the part. It offended Farradyne's sense of proportion that Mrs. Niles was gracious and well-bred instead of being loud and cheap.
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