Chapter II: Part 2

The watcher grunted, "Party, huh? All dressed up and no place to go. Same faces, same dining saloon, same games. I took a turn around the stations and went to bed. Party in this trap's just like looking out the hole. Nothing happens."

"Just don't like travel, eh?"

"Who said anything about travel? When you travel you move along all the time, and the trees and the mountains and towns rush past and you're going somewhere. I'll take travel any day--but this lost space hospital...."

Avery tried to be jovial. "Good thing we're old enough to be used to waiting. This would drive the young ones crazy."

"Driving me crazy too. Just waiting for the chance to be farmers and go on waiting for crops."

Avery edged out of the niche, although the watcher was obviously not done. "All settled down waiting to settle down. Coffee without sugar, night without end, months without news...." Avery was thirty feet down the corridor now. "... and no new audience to listen to all the swell gripes I sit here working out." His voice lost its flatness, became full and genial. "I'm the best damn griper in this damn outfit," he bragged, "I'm the...." (Noting Avery's absence) "... oh what the hell!" He brought his gaze back to the window to the stars.

Avery stopped at a door and rapped sharply. "Who is it?" "Elbert Avery." "Just a moment." He waited. "You can come in now." He turned the knob and opened the door. Angela Claflin half turned on the bench before her dressing table to face him. Her arms were raised and her hands were busy at the back of her head as she replaced the last of the bone pins in a great knot of hair black as a crow's wing. Tweezers, uncovered lipstick, rouge and powder boxes still lay on the table.

"Oh, Mustah Avery," in a voice a little high, a little twittery, "we missed you so at the pahty. We wuh so gay. Competition fo dancin' pahtnehs was jes furious and I was so hopin you'd come."

"I was on duty--couldn't make it."

"Oh I think that's jes cruel not to let jes everybody have some of the fun! You kin dance with me afteh suppah tomorr' night and we'll pretend the pahty's still on."

"I'll see." He stepped back toward the door.

"But Mistuh Avery, you didn' come hyar jes to listen to me chattuh. Is theh somethin you wanted?"

"Just dropped in to see if you enjoyed the party. Captain wanted to know."

"Well, bless his haht! You jes thank the cap'm fo me and tell him it's these yere social meetings that help us stay civilized an nice during this _long_ trip." She giggled. "It makes a gihl downright unfemi-nine sometimes, studyin' manurin' problems and sheep-breedin'."

"I'll tell him." He backed out and shut the door. "Downright unfeminine," he imitated softly, falsetto. "The old bat--dyed hair and all. No sense of the decorum of space--no sense, period." He walked on. "No loss, either."

* * * * *

He hadn't intended to stop at Bart Westcott's room, but the door was open and he could hear voices. He pushed the door a little wider and went in.

Bart and Charlie Dean and Jeff Kuhnhardt in shirt-sleeves were sitting around a flat-top table covered with large papers in the middle of the room. Bart's left hand was swiping back his mop of reddish-grey hair, his right tapping excitedly with a sharp pencil at a far point on one of the papers. "We could put unit 84 over here in the middle of the back," he was saying emphatically, "which would leave more room for cupboards and the hatch to the storage attics."

Kuhnhardt was objecting less vigorously, "But that would cut out the center window and all the women say they want as many as possible. If you put 84 here," he pointed, "you'll have better passage of air from the conditioner through there." His pencil swept an arc across the paper.

Charlie Dean was the first to notice the newcomer. "Something we can do for you, Avery?" he asked briefly, setting down his pencil.

"Captain's compliments," he answered formally, "and he requests to know whether you enjoyed the Quarter-Way Party."

"Quarter-Way Party?" Charlie turned with a slightly puzzled look to his companions. "Oh, Quarter-Way Party ... uh ... return our compliments to the captain and tell him we loved it. Not that we were there, of course."

"A few more compliments and why not?"

"Too busy. These pre-fab housing units," he indicated the papers, "come in a couple thousand pieces like an unholy jig-saw puzzle. We've got to figure how to put them together and not have any left over to store and still not get the devil from the women who'll have to operate 'em."

"What's the rush? Still ten months to go."

"Well," Westcott looked a little sheepish, "it's got to be kind of fun. We've got to working out all the variations we can so each house will be some different from all the others. Then there are all the farm buildings and offices. We won't even have all the gimmicks worked out in ten months. Local Venus conditions, you know...."

"Sort of make-work so the trip'll seem shorter?"

Kuhnhardt objected quickly, "As a matter of fact we could use another ten months. We never had time to complete our materials course on earth. We've got a lot of book work to do, too." He gestured toward Westcott's bunk, which was overflowing with manuals and thick volumes. "So parties are out, but we like them because we get fewer people in here looking for prospects for poker." He grinned at Avery.

There didn't seem to be any good comeback to this, so Avery just nodded and said, "Fine," and left. He took the elevator next to Westcott's room.

* * * * *

He stopped the elevator half-way up to headquarters and got out. Better sample a few more responses to the party. No one answered his knock at the first two doors; the third was marked DARKROOM; but at the fourth he heard a sort of mumble and turned the knob.

Samuel Wyckoff was sitting on the edge of the bunk. Not a short man, but thin like all the healthy old ones: wispy white hair and faded blue eyes and a tremulous look about the mouth made him seem fragile. He was half-dressed; his thin long hands gripped the edge of the bunk; and he was staring at the floor a foot or two his side of the door.

"Going to bed early?" Elbert Avery was politely apologetic.

"No."

"Changing, then. It doesn't matter. Captain Daneshaw is having me ask around to find out how you people enjoyed the party last night. Did you have a good time?"

"A good time?" The man didn't seem to comprehend a simple question.

"That's it. Gayety, good time, fun, prizes and all, and sugar and cream in the coffee. Did you like it?"

"Didn't go." His gaze never left the floor, though it had moved to one side to avoid Avery's feet.

"Any particular reason? Program sound dull? Were you tired?"

"I guess so."

"You're probably working too hard. I just came from Westcott's room. He and a couple of other fellows are going it fast and furious on problems in architecture--as if they were trying to make their first billion the hard way. Relax, man. The United Assembly didn't mean us to work ourselves to death."

"What did they mean us to do?" Wyckoff asked with the first sign of interest.

Avery let loose one of his rare chuckles. "Who knows? They don't. Something impractical, you can be sure. But they didn't send us out to die. We cost 'em too much."

"More than we're worth." A statement.

"Of course. Billions, actually, and on some fool thing like this. You can't teach 'em. Government generations are too short. The only administration they care about is the last one and how to talk it down. It would take a major catastrophe to beat any sense into their heads."

"I suppose so." Wyckoff still stared at the floor.

"They didn't have any place for us in their set-up, and they aren't smart enough to figure out any. We know too much. The best they could come up with was this scheme to get us out of sight." Wyckoff was certainly a good listener. "They won't even know if we land safely for another two-three years when the ship does or doesn't come back for supplies. You'd think even the most moronic secretariat would know better than to send out a bunch of colonists that can't even multiply."

"But they sent us. They must have thought there was something we could do."

"We'll never know who sent us--or why. It's all mixed up with politics somewhere. Ours but to do as they say."

"Do or die."

"What? Oh ... the quotation. Well, I stand corrected--don't know as it makes any great difference. We all will someday, in spite of the great Farrar and his coddling hospital."

Samuel looked even more fragile and a little wistful as he glanced up at Avery at last. "We thought this would be more interesting than the hospital, anyway."

"You don't like it?" El felt a sudden relief. Actually he didn't want to rob these people of any fun, he thought, and obviously most of them weren't having any anyway.

"It's just the same. Maybe we're too old to find it interesting. I dare say younger people...."

"Well, nobody can say it's our fault, anyhow. We didn't ask to get old any more than we asked to be born. I better go nose-side. Captain's waiting. Good night."

"Good night." Sam Wyckoff stood and followed Avery to the door. As it closed, he looked down at his unbuttoned shirt, his socks. "We didn't ask to get old," he whispered, and went back to the edge of his bunk.

* * * * *

Avery hustled back to the elevator. He shouldn't have spent so much time talking. Wyckoff was a good fellow. Sometimes it seemed a darn shame that the government couldn't come up with something really good for old codgers like him. But what could you do with a superannuated book reviewer like Wyckoff? Old people ought to make good book reviewers and teachers. But naturally nobody'd listen to them. Those smart alecs in Washington wouldn't recognize a bear till it bit them. Only way to batter anything into their heads....

The elevator door opened and Avery swaggered truculently along the corridor to the headquarters anteroom, his fists clenched.

The captain and recreation director looked up at his entrance.

Captain Daneshaw greeted him. "Sorry to call you up here when you're off duty. This isn't really very serious." He smiled over at Forsberg.

"Well, I did what you wanted," Avery said, sitting down to face the recreation director at the large conference table. "I asked around to get the general reaction."

"And?" from Daneshaw.

"And ... out of the six people I saw, only one woman--Miss Claflin, of course--just _luhved it_, had a _wondaful tahm_. The other five didn't go."

"Why?"

"One said it was monotonous. Said the whole trip was just like being in Block Nineteen only more so. Three fellows seemed to think it was too trivial to bother with. They've been making up better games with the housing blueprints, so they say. The last man said he was just tired." Avery leaned toward Forsberg. "Looks like you're going to have to make up a new game or think up some way to make 'em think they've never met each other and are just crazy to get acquainted." He snickered. "That's as I see it, of course. I'm no recreation director."

"Not bad!" Arnold Forsberg roared and slapped the table. "The man's a wizard, Captain!" He turned back to Avery. "You think I can't do it? The After Turnover Party theme is going to be New Personality. That's perfect! Well announce it all over the ship the first thing tomorrow. Everybody's got eleven weeks to develop a new personality to wear on our new home, Venus. It's never too late to be somebody new. Be the man you've always wanted to be for the next hundred years. That's great!"

Avery tipped back in his chair during this blast. "It really sounds corny," he belittled. "We've had a century and a half to get like we are. Why change? I'm good enough for me."

"It's your idea," said the recreation director triumphantly, getting up, "and I like it. Sorry to have been a nuisance, Tim. I'll go straight to El Avery next time."

He buttoned his resplendent silver braidjac and came around the table, resting his hand fraternally on Avery's shoulder for a moment before he reached the door. "Good night. See you at the party." Then he was gone.

* * * * *

"Need me for anything else tonight, Tim?" asked Avery.

"Thanks for doing the rounds, El," said Tim. "That's about all. By the way, who was the one you described as 'just tired'?"

"Oh, that was Wyckoff, Sam Wyckoff on the eighth floor."

"Any idea what tired him so much he didn't want to go to the party? I thought we were being pretty careful about fatigue. He's not one of the crew, is he?"

"No ... kitchen helper maybe. He didn't say it was anything in particular. He did seem sort of shot, but he perked up and we had a good talk," added Avery.

"I see."

"Well, if that's all, I'll get along and eat and shoot a couple of games of slotto before I turn in. It's relaxing after sitting over a hot calculator all evening." At the door he turned. "Can't you join me this once?"

"Not tonight. Just a few more things to attend to, thanks."

After Avery left, Daneshaw straightened a few papers aimlessly on the dull green alloid table top. "Tired," he mused, "sort of shot. Might be a case for Doc Keighley. Better see to it. Of course, he might be homesick." He stood up and glanced around the piles of papers. Nothing that couldn't wait till tomorrow.

In three minutes, he was knocking briskly on Wyckoff's door.

There was no answer. Surely the man hadn't gotten to sleep in the twenty minutes since Avery talked to him. He knocked again. Some sort of mumble came from inside. Tim turned the knob and walked in.

The light in the cabin was off, but in the dim reflection from the corridor walls, Tim could see Wyckoff was lying in the bunk, which faced the door, on his back with the covers pulled up under his chin. "Asleep so soon, Sam?" asked Tim in a low voice.

"Not quite. What is it?"

"El Avery was just up. Said you looked exhausted and naturally I was a little worried. Had a check-up with the doctor recently?"

"No ... no ... don't worry about me," faintly.

"That's part of my job. We want everybody to get to Venus ready for a hard pull. Have you been studying too hard on the trip?"

"No. My job's not very important. Please don't worry about me."

"Mind if I turn on the light and have a little talk?" Tim reached for the switch of the reading lamp at the head of the bunk on his right.

"If you want to," reluctantly.

Tim clicked the switch and sat down on the foot of the bunk. "Finding the trip comfortable?" he smiled.

"I ... I suppose."

"Miss the pretty nurses back at the hospital?"

"Oh no."

Tim looked down at the edge of the bunk thoughtfully. "Been eating regularly? Sleeping ... say, did you spill something on the blanket?" he asked suddenly and reached forward to touch the small dark stain just above the edge of the bunk. The stain was wet.

* * * * *

Tim grabbed the blanket and stripped it back. Wyckoff was still wearing his undershirt and slacks and the red stain was bright on the white sheets above and below his left wrist.

Tim jumped up and pulled open the top drawer of the built-in wall-chest, ripped out a handkerchief and hair brush and had a tourniquet on Wyckoff's upper arm before the man in the bunk could make a movement.

Holding the hair brush tight in his right hand, Tim reached across the bunk and lifted Wyckoff's other hand. There was no blood there. He sat back on the edge of the bunk.

"You meant to do this, Sam?" Daneshaw's voice was reproachful.

"I guess so ... I don't know."

"I don't think you do know. Because you're not a coward, Sam. You're not really afraid to do your share for the rest of us on this trip. We need all of us."

"Oh, I'm not very important."

"We can't spare you," Tim replied positively. "But we can talk about that in a few minutes. Can I trust you to hang on to this brush?"

"I guess so."

Tim released his grip when he felt Wyckoff's firm hold on the handle. He darted into the tiny laboratory and opened the medicine cabinet. The bulb in the interior glowed softly through the few plastic articles on the shelves. Tim rummaged among the soapaks and found a small glass bottle of aspirillin tablets. Grasping it by the neck, he struck it smartly against the monel basin, shattering it into the basin and onto the floor. He dropped the neck among the tablets in the basin and went back to the top drawer of the chest where he found another handkerchief. Back at the bunkside, he sopped up as much blood as he could with the cloth, then took it back to the lavatory and wrung out a little on the floor, wadded the handkerchief and tossed it into the basin.

Approaching Wyckoff, who had sat up in the bunk, he pushed him down again gently. "You push your button for the steward and get the doctor right away. Tell him you dropped the aspirillin bottle and got cut by a piece of flying glass. I'm going to wait in the darkroom next door and come back for a long talk after the doc is done. Hear me?"

"Yes."

"Because if the doctor doesn't come in five minutes, I'm going for him and the psychiatrist, too. But I think you'd rather not have this get out any more than I would."

"No."

"All right, then. Push the button."

Daneshaw waited while Wyckoff pushed the button in the wall above his right elbow. Then he hurried out of the cabin and into the next door, the darkroom where the biological photographer would do his work after the landing on Venus until the building was completed. He left the door open a crack and waited for the approach of the steward and doctor.

He leaned noiselessly, suddenly weary, against the wall of the darkroom. Here was the problem of the hospital all over again. Was it his fault somehow? The trip had been a great victory, seemingly, over the sagging spirits of his friends, his "army." (He heard the steward go in and come out.) His head seemed full of whirring thoughts without meaning. What fear, what despair had got into the man? What was it ... how did the words go?

... pluckt from us all hope of due reliefe, That earst us held in
love
of lingering life; Then hopelesse hartlesse, gan the cunning thiefe
Perswade us die, to stint all further strifes To me he lent this
rope,
to him a rustie knife.

How could Wyckoff have felt that life was too much to bear? The thought was so simple once it seemed right....

What if some little paine the passage have,
That makes fraile flesh to feare the bitter wave?
Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease....

(The door to Sam's cabin opened and closed again.) He would have to talk like an angel or a devil to stop Sam from another try. But Sam was one of his people and he'd got them all into this. _His_ responsibility ... his.

* * * * *

Tim had a sudden guilty feeling he had dozed off when he heard the door open and close for the third time. The doctor must have gone. He came out of the darkroom and re-entered Wyckoff's.

Sam was sitting on the edge of the bunk regarding his bandaged wrist wryly.

"All fixed up?"

"I expect so."

"Was it bad?"

"No. He didn't even have to take stitches--just little tape strips." The wry look became a grimace. "Said I was lucky it didn't get the artery. I can't even cut my wrist the right way."

Tim grinned. If Sam's sense of humor was returning, it might not be such a hard job. "Aren't you supposed to be lying down?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, you lie down anyhow and let's talk about things." Sam lowered himself obediently and Daneshaw went on. "First I want to know if you're in any trouble? Had a row with anybody? Think you've done something you wish you hadn't?"

"Well ... no."

"Good. Now what's your job on board and what do you do after we land?"

"Just a kitchen helper here. When we get there, I'll run the control panels for some remotracs--planting and harvesting, you know."

"Not a very exciting set of jobs. How's the kitchen."

The slender man bristled, looked less frail. "They don't like the way I peel wathros. Mrs. Kaplan says I peel all the vitamins off. She says you can't trust a man with a peeler anyhow," he added fiercely. "And I hate wathros no matter how you peel them!"

Tim sighed.

"You're in a rut, Sam. You've worn out that job. And you and Mrs. Kaplan are evidently wearing out each other. Do you want to change jobs?"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't mean anything against Mrs. Kaplan. She does a good piece of work."

"So should you, and wathro peeling's not necessarily it." Tim mused for a moment. "Are you sure the doc didn't say anything about your staying in bed?"

"No. I'm sure he didn't even mention it."

"It probably never occurred to him you'd do anything else. Anyhow I think this would be a good time for a little excursion. Have you been all over the ship?"

"Not since the big tour before blast-off."

"Get your shirt and shoes on. We'll go the rounds and you can have your pick of the jobs. You look them all over tonight and make up your mind tomorrow which one you would like."

Wyckoff sat up and Tim slung him the shirt from the back of the chair. He had to help him with the snaps on the shirt and the shoes, but in a few moments they were out in the corridor.

"You shouldn't spend all this time on me, Mr. Daneshaw. You just pick out a job and I'll take it."

"Spending time _is_ my job and you need a job you'll like. You know, Sam, emotional conflicts can wear a man to a frazzle twenty times faster than hard labor. And don't call me Mister. I'm Tim to everybody unless they want to bawl me out for something, and Captain only when they want me to bawl somebody else out."

"All right, Tim. Let's go."

Tim grasped Sam's arm and hit his long stride. He'd get more from him on the way. Emotional responses sure could knock hell out of a man.

* * * * *

Hell or something seemed knocked out with the insistent "Ting, ting-ting" of the rising chime in the captain's cabin at seven the next morning.

First waking. Waking itself seemed a great exertion this time. Then the long, long pause of gentle thought, of mustering of energies before opening his eyes and making a physical move to rise. Tim Daneshaw's first thought was of sinking to sleep again, of overwhelming fatigue. The bunk was firmer than usual--seemed to thrust up against his body, and to thrust up again, wearyingly, like a wave. The association brought words....

... Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and ceases
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Full consciousness came like a blow. Death, dark death meant Wyckoff, of course; and Wyckoff would be coming this morning, or, if he didn't, he, Tim Daneshaw must go in search ... must fight ... poor Sam Wyckoff deserved work.... Tim felt his thought grow dizzy and the lift and lift under him gave way to a fall and fall. He opened his eyes.

The room was steady. Only the feeling of falling a little, then stopping, then falling a little continued. Tim brought his eyes down to the desk top again and again, each time to see the glowing desk lamp, pencils, papers, opened book lie quiet, steady, without tremor. The motion must be in his dizzying head. The cabin beyond the desk was in shadow, but the shadow retreated and advanced in rhythm with the falling.

By a tremendous effort, Tim raised his hand to the wall button and pushed. The hand fell back limp on the covers.

_Why are we weighed upon with heaviness?_

His mind revolved dully, waiting for an answer, waiting for the steward, waiting and turning and almost dozing.

To answer the gentle knock on the door was too hard. He could turn his head a little. After a sharper knock, the door opened and Steward Loomis looked in. "Everything all right, Captain?" No answer.

Loomis came over to the bunk quickly. "Tim, what's the matter?"

"Hello, Loo. Weak, I guess." Words came easier now. "Better get Doc Keighley."

"You bet I will," and the steward was already hurrying out the door. "You stay right there," he added firmly and unnecessarily.

Tim stayed right there. The bed stopped falling, but he didn't move. He knew how to relax from years of practice in the hospital and years of habit before that.

Keighley walked in, bag in hand, without knocking and came and sat on the edge of the bunk. "Tim?"

"Hello, Doc. I feel done in. Air supply all right?"

"Air's OK," Doc's hand felt Tim's forehead, reached for his wrist, his eye recording the sweep of the second hand on the desk chrono. A few moments later his stethoscope pressed against Tim's chest.

* * * * *

In answer to Keighley's probing questions, Tim described his symptoms. The doctor rummaged in his bag for a hypo-pak and ampule. After the shot, he took out a bottle of capsules, closed his bag and drew up the chair from the desk.

"You know, Tim," he began softly, "we're both _old_ men. We can keep going indefinitely as long as the rate is slow and steady. Acceleration is mighty dangerous. Now you're going to rest."

"... could stand a few days of taking it easy...."

"Not a few days--months. Flat in bed."

"But the ship ... the people...." The vision of Samuel Wyckoff rose again.

"The crew and the Lord can take care of the ship; we people will have to take care of ourselves. We'll need you more the last few months of flight and after we land. If you've got to see anybody, I'll get them right now before that sedative takes effect."

Tim's hand rose and fell. "All right, Doc," the thin, exhausted voice fell too. "Even Moses didn't make the Promised Land."

"You'll make it, you fuddleheaded old Moses, if you obey Doc Keighley's commandments. Even Moses had more sense than to try to be captain and master of ceremonies and life of the party and general trouble shooter all at once."

Daneshaw smiled wanly. "I'll be good. Better have El Avery come up before I go to sleep. He'll have to take on some of my duties or figure out somebody else. He knows as much about the ship as anybody. Don't worry him, though, Frank. He's a nervous old dog.... By the way, can I read?"

"You can't even hold a book for a couple of weeks at least. If you want to hear something, I'll send you a reader or you can have a player and a bunch of wires if we carry anything but treatises on farming. I wouldn't be surprised if Avery'd make a good top man--more autocratic, less tolerant than you, but there are more ways of killing a cat ... and I'll assign you nurses in six hour shifts. It'll keep some of the girls out of mischief."

"Frank ... have a heart!"

"You have one--and hang onto it." Doc Keighley gathered up his bag and left the cabin.

Outside the door he almost bumped into Jack White, Second Astrogator, and Steward Loomis. "Loo, get El Avery up here right away before the hypo hits him. Jack, you go in and sit with him till Avery gets here. He's all right, boys. Just worn out. Let everybody know he'll be back on deck after turnover--_if_ you all stay out of his way till then. Don't let anybody but Avery or the nurse in, Jack," and the little doctor bustled off and out of sight around the curve of the corridor.

* * * * *

To Jack White, entering the tiny cabin lit only by the desk lamp, Tim Daneshaw looked near gone. He went over and sat silent on the chair the doctor had turned to the bunk. Tim's eyes were shut, but he spoke weakly.

"El? El Avery?"

"No Captain, it's Jack White. Avery will be here as soon as he can."

A long silence.

Daneshaw spoke again. "Got to shift command, Jack."

"Yes, sir."

"What about Avery, Jack. Can he do it?"

"I think so. You remember how he handled that gyroscope record the first two weeks out."

"How was that, Jack?"

White was startled, but gave no sign. If Tim Daneshaw's memory was slipping, he really was in bad shape. "You remember, Captain. We were only a few thousand miles out when the gyro appeared to be recording a constant correction, and how Mister Avery," (a term of deference would show Tim how respected Avery was) "was so thorough and kept the crew so busy they didn't have time to worry about the real danger of being off course. He got the engineers doing radionic soundings of the walls of the big tube in action and some of the crew went practically into the dead tubes looking for flare action. He had everybody else who knew about it testing all over the inner skin for an air leak that might be producing a tiny jet. It was wonderful the way he got the passengers thinking it was a routine check for the early stages of any space trip. And he never let down--sat at the calculators eighteen hours a day until he found out that the recording pen on the gyro must have got bent in blast-off. We were proud of him, Captain."

"I recall it now. You think he'll make a good executive?" Tim seemed pitifully eager for assurance.

"Make an executive, Captain? He is an executive. He's the Old Fox of Avery, Inc. again, since those two weeks. He's taken to coming into the pilot-room when he's off duty--just coming in and standing and watching as if he wanted to keep an eye on everything and everybody. And nobody seems to resent it. And he never needles the rest of us button-pushers when he finds an error in calculations. We all make them, El too, but we've quit deviling each other about them since then. He's your man."

"Thanks, Jack. I ... hoped ... you'd ... feel...." Tim's voice trailed off. "Tired ... get Avery ... tell him Sam Wyckoff...."

Another silence.

"Captain Daneshaw?"

No answer.

"Tim!" White was more insistent.

A gentle rap on the door.

"Tim, are you awake?"

After a moment of silence, Jack White got to his feet and tiptoed out.

Avery was on the other side of the door.

"He's asleep, El," White informed him, "Very sick--heart. Doc Keighley was here and says he'll be in bed at least till turnover. He told me that you were to take command--Tim Daneshaw, that is."

The two men moved away from the closed door. Elbert Avery turned to face White. "What's that about command?" he asked sharply.

"He wants you to take over. Thinks you're the best man for it. Likes the way you handled the passengers and crew over the gyro business."

"Fine job I'd make of awarding bridge prizes and settling arguments between second and third cooks on how much salt in the buns." Avery sounded gruff but pleased.

"Orders are orders," Jack White forced a smile.

"Then I guess I'll have to order you back to my turn of duty in the pilot-room while I get my bearings."

"El?" Jack was struck with a memory. "The captain said something about Sam Wyckoff, too. He went to sleep before he finished. You better ask him about it next time you see him."

"Here he comes now." The frail figure came slowly, deliberately around the curve of the corridor. "Tim probably wanted him to help me out. I hear he took him around the ship for some reason last night."

* * * * *

Samuel Wyckoff's eyes regarded the floor of the corridor as he approached. If the other men had not moved out of his way and spoken, he would probably have continued his progress to the captain's door without noticing them.

"Sam ... Sam Wyckoff. It's not that bad. Doc says he'll be up and around after turnover." Jack White's voice was full of concern.

Wyckoff looked up. "What?" he asked dully.

Avery repeated, "It's not too bad. Doctor Keighley says he has to rest but he'll be back on his feet in less than three months if we don't get him worried or tired again. That right, Mr. White?"

"That's it. And the captain said something about you just as he was dozing off. Mr. Avery here says he thinks he meant for you to help out in the emergency."

"He took you all over the ship last night, didn't he?" added Avery.

"Well, yes ... but...."

"He must have had some idea of what was coming. I've never been in half the labs or the kitchen and Ole Sorensen wouldn't let me nearer to his prize cows than the door of the stable. Not that I'm fond of cows, anyway. So if I've got to take over command for a while, looks as if you're the choice of the boss for liaison man. C'mon along up to the confab room and we'll pow-wow."

"But ... I ... that is ... can't I see the captain? He said ... I mean I need to see him. He told me to come this morning." Wyckoff looked from one to the other.

White was definite. "Not today, maybe not this week. Doctor's orders. You better get along with Mr. Avery. You know the ship. The captain would want you to keep things running smoothly without a break."

"Well, all right, I'll come." Wyckoff sounded doubtful still, but he allowed the others to lead him toward the elevator which would take them up to headquarters.

Just at the elevator door they were met by the floor steward, Loomis.

"Mr. Avery?"

"Yes."

"Who's to be in command, sir?"

"I am."

"Well, Mrs. Jeffries of the laundry just phoned and said when she got down to the laundry a few minutes ago the place was flooded with water. One of the taps sprung or something, and she called damage control and they told her to call water reclamation and I guess the water-rec squad was all over at hydroponics trying to figure out why the increase in humidity--anyhow, Mrs. Jeffries is upset because she can't get the captain and will you go down and smooth her out?" Loomis recited rapidly.

Avery turned to Samuel Wyckoff. "Guess you get right into harness. This is for you." Then to Loomis, "Sam's my righthand man for just this sort of thing. Give him all the help you can," and back to Wyckoff: "We'll see you up nose-side as soon as you're through. We've got to plan fast so's not to upset the whole crowd. You take the elevator down: we'll walk up. We're in no hurry."

As the elevator glided down out of sight past the transplast door, and Loomis returned along the corridor, Avery and White turned into the narrow winding stair to climb slowly to the fourth floor above. White looked up at Avery's back and asked, puzzled, "Do you think this came on suddenly? And why? I didn't see him too often, but he always seemed so tough, so ... well ... resilient, if you know what I mean. But he must have known it was coming if he took Wyckoff around last night. What do you think happened to him?"

The man ahead shrugged his shoulders and they climbed on and up.

* * * * *

The "New-Side Out Ball and Social Assembly" was in full swing the night after Turnover, when Jack White edged quickly through the door into the circular Great Saloon just in time to avoid collision with a fantastically costumed guest carrying a tray half full of tiny crystal coffee-glasses, and stood peering through the half-dark of lowered lights at the little clusters of people in easy chairs and loungettes which ringed the room and filled it with a confusion of talk and laughter. He moved a step or two away from the wall, his eyes seeking more intently through the small throng near the center of the room on his right where Captain Daneshaw, guarded by a solicitous Sam Wyckoff, sat in a great raised chair receiving congratulations on his recovery. Elbert Avery was not in that bunch. Mr. White picked his way to the left where a few couples were dancing to the slow strains of the xerxia being played by a small orchestra on a bit of a curtailed stage. So intent was his search, that he ran into the arm of a chair and almost fell into the midst of the gay little groups.

Helen Platt's voice was sweet, chiding, "You're quite out of character, Mister White. You have to give up the absent-minded math professor this evening. We're all somebody new tonight, you know."

Scattered laughter.

White looked down. The ex-Latin teacher, heavily made up, had hidden her thinning grey hair under a towering bejewelled turban. "I'm a movie actress and Phil here is a big game hunter," she added, swinging a ruby-shod toe toward a lamp-bronzed man wearing a chalk-white nilene tropojak and encircling crimson commerbund. "Tell us something about yourself and let us guess what kind of secret you've been hiding the last century."

White forced a smile. "Not yet," he apologized. "Got to find Elbert Avery first. Quite urgent. Is he around here?"

Nobody had seen him, and Jack White, promising abstractedly to come back later and let them "guess him" went on down the room, cautiously avoiding another accident.

From circle to cluster he repeated his question with no better success. Several times he was asked why he wanted Avery and twice men of the group offered to help him hunt. To each question, he mumbled something about its not being important--he just wanted to find El Avery for a minute, thanks, and went on toward the orchestra on its stage. As he made his way carefully around the room, peering at dancers, at circles on the other side of the party dusk, he failed to notice the silence behind him. The worried glances which followed him, the half sentences, "Avery this time?" "Overwork...." "Too much for one man...." "... collapsed somewhere?" "... do you suppose?" "... something wrong, definitely...." "Did you see how pale Jack was?" failed to reach him; but more than a quadrant of the hall was aware of his quickened pace when he caught sight of the wiry little man standing against the wall half hidden by the outer edge of one curtain of the stage.

* * * * *

Elbert Avery was regarding the dancers morosely, his full-dress uniform indicating that he, at least, was sticking to his character as chief astrogator in preference to some more exotic role. As he had expressed it to Samuel Wyckoff when both men went to escort Tim Daneshaw triumphantly to the assembly, "I'm too old to change again. I'm an astrogator now and a 'gator I'll be to the bitter end."

Jack White reached him now, spoke in low tones; and both men hurried out a small door at the side of the hall. A sigh seemed to go over the room and conversation rose to a new pitch of animation in a dozen places when it was obvious that Avery was in full control of his wind and limbs.

Out in the curving corridor, White took Avery's arm and fairly swept him back to the left, to the elevator. He could hardly speak. "Gyroscope bearings worn on one side ... Powell and North rechecking porthole readings after turnover ... degrees out of course ... miss Venus completely as we're headed ..." he almost babbled.

Avery pulled back abruptly against White's arm and stopped dead. "Get your breath, man," he snapped, "and tell me clearly what's wrong. Something about the course?"

A paper-tophatted guest with a tray of filled glasses of ebony coffee, unable to pass them as they stood in the middle of the corridor, waited behind for them to move on before he could reach the door to the Saloon twenty feet farther on ... waited listening.

"Preposterous!" shouted Avery, "we've had watchers with accurate charts peeling their eyes at the sky every foot of the way till now."

"We're going to miss, I tell you," White responded desperately. He began to tremble as the delayed effects of shock started to tell, and grabbed Avery's arm to steady himself, then pulled Avery toward the shaft and into the car. "Come down and see for yourself. We're lost! Lost!"

The tophatted tray carrier continued to the door of the Saloon. Setting his tray on the floor just inside, he circled the room, pausing at each cozy gathering to recount White's frantic statements and passing on to the next like a man in a dream.

* * * * *

"Nonsense, nonsense," Avery was gently shaking the already trembling man in the elevator. "Nobody's lost among the inner planets. I'll come down with you. You'll see ... a little button pushing...." As if to illustrate, he pushed the button and the car began to descend.

The tophatted figure didn't come to the group containing Dr. Marquith, the psychiatrist, until it had covered two-thirds of the room. The doctor questioned him carefully--this could be another breakdown like several which had occurred early in the trip when port-watchers, eyes fatigued and brain a-dazzle from watching the heavens, had declared positively that the ship had left the solar system altogether and had required days of treatment to convince them that their fears or concealed desires were of the shadowy substance of dreams. But the waiter showed none of the symptoms of such a breakdown.

"I think we'd better tell your story to the captain, son," the doctor suggested quietly to the now haggard looking older man. "There is certainly nothing you or I can do to help matters and there is no need to alarm the rest of the passengers now." He led the unprotesting man toward Daneshaw on his dais.

They watched the group around the captain disperse at some word from the doctor; their tension mounted as the psychiatrist talked to Daneshaw and Wyckoff; and the hatted man gestured toward the door through which he had entered the room.

When Samuel Wyckoff straightened up from leaning over Captain Daneshaw, absolute quiet preceded the first of his clear confident tones.

"Matt Carey, here, wants me to tell you that he's awfully sorry he alarmed you. He did overhear Mr. White tell Mr. Avery something which sounded ... well ... disturbing. But we must all realize that many a slight accident has seemed disastrous at its first reporting. And we haven't even had an official report of any kind."

A woman somewhere began to sob.

"Come now," Wyckoff said reproachfully, "we are not children!"

A nervous giggle sounded from another quarter.

Wyckoff continued more forcefully. "Dr. Marquith, Carey and I are going down to the pilot-room to find out what we can for you, so keep your shirts (I mean costumes) on, and don't forget to make Captain Daneshaw's recovery celebration a gay as well as a memorable one." He patted Tim's shoulder familiarly, beckoned to the two others to precede him across the floor.

At the door, he saw the tray of glasses and turned. "You fellows better bring another round of drinks. I could stand one myself." He stooped, lifted a glass, drank, and followed the others out.

Men rose automatically from the groups, collecting empty and half-ful glasses alike, and headed in a mass for the door; but the first few attempts to revive conversation sounded so loud that when the room finally filled with sound, it was the rustle and sibilance of whispering.

* * * * *

The self-appointed investigating committee of three stood in the pilot-room door.

El Avery's crisp voice was snapping at White the new equation to be set into the B calculator, rattling out the key for the data Powell handed him to be fed to C by North in the intervals of rest while A calculator assimilated and digested. The floor of the computation area was littered with the yards of coils of paper ribbon Avery had ripped from the roll of gyro record to find the original deviation (minus the bits which Carruthers, Fifth Astrogator, had taken to the enlargement room for micro-measurements). At the accepted break for complete clearing of the A calculator banks, Avery's precision broke to a growl.

"Damned earthbound whelps!" he muttered. "Don't even bother to discover major factors like light pressure in their measly little tubs!" He jerked to a stand, stripped off his braidjac and flung it into the midst of the insubstantial paper snake. He sat down with a thump and bent back over the calculator keyboard. "Those babies don't care what they lose or how!"

He set to work again with White's eighth set of solutions forming them into factors of equations of his own. Powell, passing around the welter of paper, was the first to notice the observers and yelled at them, "You boys round up the engine room crew, quick. Get them into the boom room and tell 'em to stand by for intermittent rocket and main tube fire! Beat it!"

Jack White looked up from his keyboard, "And get the passengers into bed for turnover, too!"

"You take Matt, Doc," said Wyckoff, authoritatively. "Don't make an announcement, just go the rounds and call out engine crew as if it were a piece of routine. Matt, you stand out in the hall and tell them there to report to the boom room presto. When you get 'em all out, Doc, go and tell Tim Daneshaw I'll be down to report in a minute. Jolly 'em up a bit if you can."

Wyckoff himself advanced a couple of steps into the pilot-room. Powell passed him again on his way back to the massive data spitter and said, "Thought we asked you to clear out."

His rudeness seemed not to affect the easy poise of the slim old man. Wyckoff's voice was conciliatory, "I've got to make some sort of report on this beehive to the captain. It's the general impression that we're in the middle of disaster."

Powell roared, "Avery! Who let this out? The passengers are rioting!"

"Not rioting--praying more likely," corrected the man at the door.

"That'll keep 'em out of trouble," Avery flipped back, his pencil moving feverishly across a scratch pad.

Wyckoff called across the clatter of the spitter, now operating with a ferocious din, "What'll we tell 'em, Avery? They've got to know something or there will be a riot or worse. Is there really any danger?"

"There's always danger," Avery was growling again, "when some unmitigated unweaned engineers on an unmentionable planet cook up a foolproof system of astrogation."

He handed the scratch pad to Jack White and waved a hand at A calculator. "Take off these and add them into the firing times. I'll send Wilman and Adams up and put them on the intercom for porthole reports during firing. I'm going with Sam and stop the rush for the life-boats we don't have."

Donning his jak, he arose and kicked his way defiantly through the welter of paper and stamped free of it as he reached the door. He hurried up the corridor to the elevator, eight or ten paces in advance of Wyckoff, and jabbed the button. "Sam my boy," he barked impatiently, waiting for the car, "the worst cause of panic is panic. I've been on the market and I know!"

* * * * *

The elevator door slid shut and Wyckoff repeated his earlier question, "Is it really bad, El?"

"Probably nothing a little prompt action can't fix," Avery replied. "It's going to take two more turnovers, though. You know we haven't any jets in the nose to amount to anything, and we'll have to tack back across our charted course like bats out of you know where. Carruthers will have to whip up a new batch of charts for the sky-watchers, too, but we can still outsmart those idiots on earth and land on Venus _if_ we want to."

"If we _want_ to?" The car stopped and the two got out.

"I said if we want to, and that's what I meant," Avery replied tartly, heading up the Saloon floor corridor. "I'll bet most of us didn't want or expect much more than to cut loose from our old lives and problems; and that's completely accomplished. Most of us just wanted to crawl away and die with some decent measure of privacy. We can do that, too, if we want to."

Through the thin panel of the saloon door the music came, singing weakly at first, then growing, tremulously....

Eternal Father, God of Grace,
Whose hand hath set the stars in place,

"We've changed our minds, Elbert," said Samuel Wyckoff.

Who biddst the planets turn and sweep
To Thine appointed orbits keep,
Oh hear us when to Thee we cry
For those in peril in the sky!

A moment's silence through the door. Wyckoff pushed it open for Avery and followed him into the room.

The hundreds of people standing in the room, looking at Captain Daneshaw in the center, did not notice the two until they had almost reached him. Hundreds of breaths, thousands of muscles clenched, they awaited the word. Avery gave one furtive, almost guilty look around at the staring faces; then, his jauntiness returning, he took the last few steps to the captain's side. Tim Daneshaw raised his hand, unnecessarily, for silence. Avery spoke.

"With your assistance, we shall land on Venus on schedule."

A great sigh from hundreds of lips.

Avery continued, "We are off course because of a factor that was overlooked in building the _Colonia_. But there is no reason why we can't meet our new home when she gets there. There is no reason why we can't do a better job than the engineers and Space Commission expected of us." _No_ reason. There were more ways of outsmarting young fools than tying their feet with high tension wire. He gestured at Sam Wyckoff. "Tell 'em what to do next, trouble shooter."

Wyckoff took up, "There will be two more turnovers, the first within a couple of hours, I expect. You've just been through one and know what to do as far as remaining in your cabins with a good supply of solid food in your kits and plenty of packaged water. As Mr. Avery expresses it, we shall have to run to catch up with our course, so there will be acceleration, too. The gravitators will be switched on again immediately after turnover, but, since acceleration may be intermittent the ship may seem bumpy until a constant acceleration has been reached. All of you who are not essential crew or involved with food service or care of animals had better go for rations at once and then strap into your bunks with a sedative and maybe a good book. Food services go hand out ration packs and report back here. Crew members still in the hall meet with Mr. Avery by the stage." He paused for breath. "And before you walk not run to the nearest food hatch," (tension in the Great Saloon was a new thing, alert, responsive), "let's have three rousing cheers for a better man with a calculator than any on earth! Hip! Hip!..."

"Hoo-ray!" Deafening.

"Hip!... Hip!..."

"Hoo-ray!"

The third cheer was a wave of noise that had no beginning but dimmed suddenly when a woman near the captain folded her hands and bowed her head. The crowd followed the example like one being.