FAST PASSAGE

Originally published in Other Worlds Science Stories, January 1953.

Bill Lanston’s blue eyes all but shot sparks as he leaned his lanky, six-foot-two frame across the desk of the Terran consul on Corsha, fourth planet of a star far enough from Sol to be known only by a number. His reddish hair was rumpled.

“Mr. Axelrod!” he protested.

John Axelrod raised a hand to supplement his icy stare.

“My dear Lanston,” he said, choosing each word with a precision that implied repugnance, “permit me to repeat—I trust for the last time—under existing regulations, you are not eligible for free transportation back to Terra.”

He almost smiled as Lanston clenched his fists and sought for words. Almost, not quite.

“I can’t see where you got the idea,” he continued. “The Terran government is not a charitable organization. If it offered to transport in luxury every small-time promoter who came to Corsha expecting to make money out of thin air—”

“Look, Mr. Axelrod!” Lanston exploded. “I didn’t ask for any first-class luxury passage! I just want to get off this jungle-rotting planet any way I can! I admit I’m no pioneer. Why is there some dam fool rule to spoil my every try to clear out?” Axelrod sighed primly without changing expression, and hitched a sheaf of papers across his desk. Letting his eyes drift down to them, he suffered the remainder of Lanston’s tirade in disapproving silence.

“I don’t have the price of the passage back to Terra,” said the younger man, pacing up and down before the desk. “All right! I’m willing to work—but you can’t get into a crew from Corsha without a union card, a space license, and the luck to have some third assistant jet jammer get blind enough to jump ship.”

The consul turned a page and partially hid a yawn.

“Neither will you let me make any kind of deal for what’s left of my trading company, to scrape up the money. Is it making you happier to see me starving on your doorstep?” Axelrod deserted his report regretfully.

“My dear Lanston,” he reproved, “I can’t interfere with the local colonial debt laws. You shoulo have thought of them before starting your enterprise on half a zipper. It is not my order that halted your operations until you can refinance.”

Lanston growled and clapped one palm to his forehead.

“Of course,” Axelrod finished, “for the sake of Terran-colonial relations, I had to forbid you to leave Corsha while your debts remain unpaid.”

“Fine! And how will I pay them, ever, unless I get away from here long enough to raise some cash?”

Axelrod stared reflectively into space as he carefully aligned the papers before him. When the edges of the pages were almost exactly parallel with those of the shiny desk-top, he delivered his considered judgment.

“Being Terran consul on Corsha, and not a local banker, Mr. Lanston, I am hardly qualified to advise you on that point. Now, if you will excuse me…?”

He tapped the papers gently with the well-manicured nail on his forefinger. Lanston pivoted and drifted toward the door in the midst of a reddish haze, hoping he could get outside before he committed murder. Axelrod’s precise tones halted him in the doorway.

“Just one thing, Mr. Lanston! There have been rumors to the effect that you have been…ah…negotiating the purchase of a certain old space vessel. I do hope you are not contemplating…er…skipping out, is I believe the term is used!”

Lanston recalled later that in the ensuing moment of tense silence he had distinctly heard the muted hum of the handsome electric clock on the wall.

Then he slammed the door with a violence that shook the paneled walls and brought a startled squeak from Axelrod’s pert blonde receptionist. Lanston passed through the outer office like a high gale.

In the corridor outside, people skipped nimbly from his path; and Lanston presently came to himself in the yellowish sun-glare of the street.

How did he know about that ship deal? he asked himself, as he strode along ignoring the shop displays of fancy gadgets imported from Terra and other worlds. The old clam has been spying on me—it’s a wonder I don’t have icicles on the back of my collar! How does that friendly-looking receptionist stand working for—?

Lanston stopped dead at a crossing to consider the possibility that Consul Axelrod might be partially human. He snorted at the thought, but the moment had calmed him enough to look about for a public visio booth.

He dialed the numbers of two or three Terran-style taverns until he located the man he wanted. The visage that appeared on the screen was pleasant, pudgy, and pinkish—an effect considerably dampened by the shrewd glitter of the little green eyes.

“Hello, Foster!” Lanston greeted it. “How are you?”

“Hi, Bill. Half-lit; but this place you steered me to promises to supply a stomach pump free. What’s up?”

“In a nutshell—how about that ship for trading company deal?”

The pinkish face moved slightly on the screen, then became bland.

“You changed your mind mighty fast.”

“My health calls for a change of climate,” replied Lanston.

Foster regarded him with a grin.

“Come to think of it,” he commented, examining Lanston’s flushed features, “you do look a shade on the high-pressure side. Maybe a little change of gravity—”

“Okay, I’ll meet you at your hotel in an hour,” the other cut him short.

“I have to see a friend of mine out at the spaceport. He’s calculating curves for that new super-liner that’s blasting off tomorrow, and I figure a copy would help me save astrogation time.”

“It might at that,” agreed Foster.

“But don’t forget that the Nova is the last word and a lot faster on the jump than an old freighter like the Saphire. They even have a brand-new type of artificial gravity on her.”

“They can have pinwheels and pennants if they like. I just want to know the general direction of Sol. There is one little favor you might do me, though.”

“What’s that?”

“After I have your used but sturdy spaceship and you’re sitting in the office of my modest but expandable import company, you might let me have a day or two to try out the ship before you register the new ownership with the Terran consul.” Foster winked, and asked no questions.

Twenty-four hours later, Lanston was out of the bag, as far as being anchored to Corsha was concerned. What else he had gotten himself into, he was not quite sure.

He had avoided the formalities of clearing for outer space for the simple reason that he intended to ape the course of the Nova as soon as he escaped Corsha’s atmosphere, instead of carrying out a routine trading expedition to one of the other planets in the system. Much red tape had been saved thereby, but Lanston was beginning to wonder if some of it might not have been handy for holding his old rocket together.

Maybe she was fully supplied when I got her, he thought, but it’s sure taking a lot of air to keep the pressure up. I wonder how many pinpoint leaks she has, and where?

He could not, he decided as he checked his course against that planned for the Nova, claim that he had actually been cheated, considering the state of the “business” he had handed over to Foster. The Saphire would have been only reasonably risky as a means of travel to Corsha’s sister planets. It would be Lanston’s own fault if he got into trouble by heading into interstellar space.

“But it’s the only way!” he growled. “Otherwise, I’d gimp around Corsha till I rotted!”

Satisfied with the course achieved by his rather amateur piloting—he had not considered it necessary to get an interstellar license at the spaceport—Lanston plugged in the antiquated detectors to the general alarm system and went to check his fuel tanks. He hoped he would never have to draw upon their contents again, but it was a good idea to know how much was left.

“Well, it seems to work,” he admitted, after a look at the rocket system, “even if she is patched together like a soapbox scooter. Foster sure didn’t lose on this deal!”

The Saphire had been designed for interplanetary or short interstellar hops with small cargoes and a crew of about ten. At some time, she had been converted so that two or three men, with a reckless faith in automatic gadgets, could handle her. Storage space for food, oxygen, water, and similar necessities had been economized correspondingly, as had the air-conditioning and other furnishings.

“Outfitted for shoestring tramp operation,” muttered Lanston. “Well, with any luck, I won’t have to keep her long.”

He set the cheap, inadequate detectors for close scanning of a certain sector of space. The most casual comparison of his aim with the direction of flight would have turned any experienced spaceman ashen. The Saphire plunged blindly ahead, scanning cautiously back toward Corsha.

That ought to do, he thought. Now, to see if there’s a bunk that won’t come loose from the bulkhead!

He eased into one without removing his clothes, and eyed a rusty patch overhead until he dozed off.

The alarms awoke him several hours later. He yawned, stretched, and made his way to the control room without haste.

Such of the instruments as he could read and understand offered an estimate of the distance between him and the ship rapidly overhauling the Saphire. Lanston decided he had several hours to make ready.

As soon as he thought the overtaking ship could receive his signals, he set the automatic transmitter to sending out distress calls.

Lanston spent the last hour watching the trim bulk of the Nova swell out of the blackness and creep abreast of the old freighter. He had to use the observation telescope, since the luxury liner never did come close enough to be seen by the naked eye.

Instead, they sent across an emergency rocket. Lanston shoved a few papers into his pocket to prove ownership of the Saphire if need be, squirmed into a spacesuit, and hustled out through the airlock to receive the magnetic grapple of the small rocket.

He kicked it loose, and took a firm grip on the line. Then, he jumped off and drifted to the hull of the emergency vessel, where he was presently admitted to the airlock.

“What’s the idea banging on the port like that?” demanded the grizzled spaceman who helped him out of his suit.

“Let’s not waste any time!” said Lanston in urgent tones.

“What’s the matter?” inquired an officer from the entrance of the tiny control room. “Don’t you want us to see if there’s anything to be done?”

Lanston glanced at him. He was slightly under medium height, and seemed even shorter because he was so chunky. His uniform sleeves were noticeably tight about the shoulders. Dark brown hair curled from under the uniform cap set precisely above a broad, tanned fare.

His voice was deep and not unpleasant, except for a tone of suspicion.

“There’s nothing to be done,” said the former trader. “And I was the only one aboard, anyway.”

“Let’s get back, then,” said the other, and Lanston relaxed.

He offered a brief, censored account of his dealings on Corsha when the officer—who turned out to be John Kurian, the chief pilot—led him to the shiny, gadget-packed control room. Lanston was about to comment on the longitudinal layout of the decks, which was in contrast to the usual vertical sections climbing from jets to nose, when Kurian presented him noncommittally to the commander of the Nova.

Captain James Stower was a beefy, graying man. He seemed to think twice when the erstwhile trader introduced himself as “Captain” Lanston. Otherwise, he was affable enough, perhaps in anticipation of reporting the comparatively rare feat of a rescue in space. Lanston neglected to mention that he was a captain with neither crew nor cargo.

“I don’t know what caused the leakage,” he concluded his highly imaginative story, “but it seemed as if the fuel was volatilizing and seeping into all compartments except the control section I had sealed off. I didn’t find out till too late.”

He waited for suspicious questions, especially from Kurian, who struck him as being anything but slow on the uptake.

Instead, the captain and his chief officer stared at each other meaningfully. Stower rapped cryptically upon the metal bulkhead with one knuckle.

“I don’t know that it proves anything,” Kurian objected, but Stower cut him off with a warning jerk of the thumb toward the two or three assistants on duty in the main part of the control room, forward from the extension of the corridor where they stood.

“Have the steward find Mr.—ah…Captain Lanston a place to sleep,” he ordered quickly. “Then, when you check the emergency jet you used, take a look at our fuel tanks!”

Lanston, overwhelmed by relief at being taken at face value, meekly followed the solid shoulders of Kurian down the corridor without raising any questions. He wondered idly if the chief pilot had ever been a wrestler.

Not a pro, anyway, he decided. Not crunched up. In fact, he’s not a bad-looking guy, but I wouldn’t want those big mitts wrapped around my throat.

They went down a short stairway and passed through two doorways that Lanston recognized for ports through airtight bulkheads. In a comfortably large lounge which was in the process of being rearranged after on section of the passengers had dined, Kurian delivered him to a double-chinned little fellow in a white jacket.

“Higgins,” he said, “this is…Captain Lanston. Find someplace for him to stay. He had to abandon his ship just now.”

Higgins raised his eyebrows to stare at Lanston as the pilot departed aft. His bulging, light-blue eyes were eagerly curious as he congratulated Lanston upon his escape.

“Lucky, for me you people came along,” admitted Lanston.

Higgins left his assistants to carry on with reconverting the dining saloon to a lounge, and led Lanston forward again.

“This second section holds the largest number of passenger cabins, Captain,” he told his charge in his whiskey tenor. “There are more in the section we just left, along with the recreation space, and room for the crew in Section One.”

He had guided Lanston to a flight of stairs as he spoke, and they presently reached the deck one level above that of the control room. Higgins led the way toward the center of the ship, and Lanston became confused after a few steps.

Losing my sense of direction, he thought. Wonder why there isn’t a single main corridor?

“This is the only unoccupied suite this jump,” said Higgins, sliding open a door. “We call it the ‘Galactic Suite’ and I understand, sir, that the cost matches the name.”

Lanston peered in at a luxuriously furnished chamber. Although the furniture was doubtless as light in weight as was possible to make it, the deceptive design suggested solid comfort—a marked novelty for a spaceship.

“If you’d rather, Captain,” said Higgins anxiously, “I could ask some of the engineering officers to double up.”

“Oh…no,” replied Lanston, trying to seem unimpressed. “I don’t like to put them to that trouble. After all, engineers are human too.”

“Yes, sir. Heh-heh! I’ll see if I can have a change of clothes for you by the time you arise, Captain.”

“Fine, fine!” Lanston beamed, rubbing his toe over an imitation floor fabric that looked remarkably like carpet.

“I’d offer to send in a tray,” Higgins apologized, backing to the door, “but we’re so short-handed that we have to restrict meals to the regular hours.”

“Why’s that?” asked Lanston.

“Oh, a couple of cooks slipped the jets along with others of the crew on the last few planets.”

Lanston suddenly lost his complacency. He reached out a long arm to draw Higgins gently inside the door again. With the other hand, he thoughtfully ruffled his reddish hair.

“What’s the matter with this bottle?” he demanded abruptly. “Crew deserting so far from Terra…captain and pilot making funny faces when I said my fuel tanks leaked …?”

Higgins started uncomfortably, and twisted his second chin into his collar.

“We-ell…harumph…I might’s well tell you, Captain. Captain Stower thinks we’re passing through some sort of rays in this part of space that work on the metal in the hull—”

He broke off to glance guiltily over his shoulder.

“That’s just rumor, o’ course. You understand, I wasn’t supposed to be listening. Besides, I don’t believe it any more ’n the ones that slipped the jets did.”

“What do you believe?”

“It’s the new grav system!”

Lanston blinked. He wondered if he had stayed on Corsha too long. There were stories of traders and planet jumpers who lived on the fringes of civilization until they became a little “variable.”

“The grav system?”

“Yes, sir. You see, it isn’t like the old type, with thousands of cells built in between the decks and the vertical layout. The whole ship is put together around a core of empty space, an’ the attraction is generated in there.”

Lanston eyed him, beginning to worry. By now, the fat little steward was almost spluttering in his haste to speak. He seemed definitely scared, now that he had let the mask slip.

“A core of empty space?” asked Lanston. “You mean just open, or a vacuum?”

“An honest-to-galaxy vacuum. It runs from just this side of the main jets to under the control room. You might say it’s something like an electromagnet, ’cept it works on more than just metal. What it does to metal—well, nobody knows, I guess, but Mr. Kurian said something once about making it tired. I think that was what he said.”

The light blue eyes, which had been staring into emptiness over Lanston’s shoulder, refocused. Higgins abruptly shut his mouth, as if aware that he had been babbling.

“Did he say ‘fatigued’?” asked Lanston, as the steward sidled toward the door again.

“I think maybe it was something like that, Captain. I—you’ll have to excuse me. The lounge…?”

He edged out into the corridor as he spoke, and slid the door shut. Lanston shrugged.

“Hope I don’t find myself marooned at the next planet the Nova touches,” he muttered. “If they lay her up for over-hauling, I might just as well have kept the old Saphire.”

He explored the facilities of the suite. The bedroom off the chamber where Higgins left him was too inviting after the rigid bunk of the Saphire. He decided to enjoy the soft mattress before someone thought up questions about his future plans.

The appointments did not include spare pajamas, so he went to bed in his underwear. Within a few minutes, an unsuspected exhaustion resulting from his tense hours waiting to be picked up left him sound asleep.

“Beats buying a ticket, anyway,” he congratulated himself as he pulled up the single lightweight blanket he had chosen.

He was awakened finally by voices in the outer room.

“Ah, breakfast,” he murmured, and sat up expectantly.

He glanced at his wrist watch, and was surprised to find that he had slept nine hours. Then he looked up as he heard a gasp from the direction of the door.

“Good morning!” he said enthusiastically. “Are you from the steward’s department?”

The girl in the doorway stared at him coldly. She was of slightly less than medium height, and anything but scrawny. Her brown, shoulder-length hair had enough gold in it to pass as blonde. Against a peaches and cream complexion, her lips glowed bright red. Lanston wished fleetingly that they were less drawn down with displeasure at the corners.

“Willy!” she called over her shoulder, ignoring his question. “There’s someone here.”

Lanston admired her silhouette against the light that had been turned on in the outer chamber, and tried to tell himself that the trace of petulance in the husky voice might be justified by surprise. He became sufficiently aware of his surroundings to hitch up the light blanket under which he had slept.

Over the girl’s shoulder appeared the face of a man. To Lanston’s surprise, for she had spoken as if to an intimate, the face was middle-aged and puffy with high living.

“Who are you?” demanded the newcomer in a blustering tone.

Lanston noticed as “Willy” edged cautiously past the girl that the man was growing a paunch to match his graying hair. The clothes draping the stocky figure, however, were expensive.

Must be her father, thought Lanston, determining to offer no offense to anyone in such an influential position. She might call him by his first name. Lots of people do nowadays.

Then he noticed further the way the girl twitched aside just before her companion’s second hand came into view, and he decided that the caress had been most un-paternal.

“Uh… I’m Captain Lanston,” he answered, hastily clearing his throat as they waited, staring. “Who are you?”

“Oh, the fellow they fished out of space last night? I’m Wilson Boley and this is Miss Knapp.”

Lanston waited for admiring questions about his escape. There was merely silence.

At last, Boley fidgeted and muttered something about “coming back later to inspect the suite,” and the couple turned to leave.

They had taken only a step when a familiar voice greeted them.

“Good morning, Miss Knapp…Mr. Boley.”

“Ah, hello there, Higgins,” said Lanston as the steward reached the doorway. “What’s for breakfast?”

He tried to adopt the mien of the hardened spaceman awaking lighthearted after a brush with lonely death. Something spoiled the effect. Higgins glared at him, and wormed, his way inside past Boley and the girl with a gross lack of solicitude.

“Get outa that bed, Lanston!” he barked.

The tone of his husky tenor was markedly at variance with the respect he had shown Lanston only a few hours earlier.

“We’d better go, Julie,” Boley advised the girl.

“Huh?” grunted the man from Corsha unpleasantly conscious of the facts that the girl and Boley had paused to stare back at him and that two burly spacemen had moved into view just beyond the door.

“Captain Stower wasn’t even close to getting up to interstellar speed yet,” said Higgins significantly.

“I don’t get it,” muttered Lanston, wondering what that had to do with him.

“Captain Stower got it!” retorted Higgins. “The answer to his radio back to Corsha. You got quite a reputation, Bud!”

Lanston swung his feet over the edge of the bed and reached for his pants and shirt. Confused momentarily at being the center of attraction, he hesitated.

Axelrod, of course! he told himself furiously. HE wouldn’t miss the chance! Well, Stower and Kurian may have my orbit plotted now, but they’ll have to take me along whether they like it or not. And once on Terra, I’ll find a way to stay!

“Let’s come back later, Julie,” Boley urged.

Julie Knapp giggled.

“Captain Lanston, he called himself!” she murmured. “What will they do with him, Willy? Do you think you could get the captain to assign him to our table? Poor Higgins is so short of help!”

By this time, on Higgins’ signal, the two husky crewmen reached Lanston. They began to pick him up, blanket and all, with the evident intention of seeking out the nearest disposal chute.

“Hey!” yelped the ex-trader. “You can’t pull this stuff! I demand to see the captain!”

“You will, you will; that’s where we’re going,” one of them assured him grimly.

“Well, why can’t I get dressed first?” inquired Lanston, feeling at a distinct disadvantage as the blanket began to slip.

“Captain said to hurry,” snapped Higgins.

And so they hurried.

Somewhere out in the corridor, Lanston managed to get his feet under him and saved himself from being dragged. He clung futilely to his shirt and trousers, which was just as well. By the time his two escorts deposited him before Captain Stower in the little foyer at the rear of the control room, the blanket was a distant memory along with the fading laughter of Julie Knapp.

At a gesture from Stower, the crewmen released Lanston and departed, sliding the door shut behind them.

“You cheap little jet-hopper!” sneered the beefy commander. “Captain Lanston, eh? Why, if they didn’t want you back on Corsha so badly, I’d have you planted out on the nose for a frozen figurehead!”

“What do they want of me?” asked Lanston, considering it beneath him to object to the term “little,” even though Stower had to look up to glare at him.

“Ask Mr. Kurian! I have other things to do.”

He turned away and marched out of the compartment, his shoulders set indignantly. Kurian, who had drifted up during the exchange, surveyed Lanston unsmilingly.

“I can’t quote the whole message,” he said, “but it mentioned skipping out on debts, failing to get official clearance before blasting off, operating a spaceship illegally, and…oh, a lot more. You ought to be good for life!”

Lanston finished hopping on one bare foot while he thrust the other into a leg of his pants. He pulled up the latter and immediately felt braver.

“That’s just hearsay,” he declared, fumbling for a sleeve of his shirt. “We’ll get that all straightened out when I reach Terra.”

“Don’t know how you’re planning to get that far,” Kurian replied. “Our next stop, before we get to Centaurus, is Johanssen III. I guess we can find something to keep you busy till then.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You don’t think you’re getting a free ride after that yarn you fed us, do you? We’re short of men in the galley and in the rocket room both. Take your choice.”

“Like hell I will!” Lanston yelled. “I owe you for picking me out of space, but I expect you to treat me like a distressed spaceman. Don’t start pushing!”

He shrugged into his shirt, noting the flush that was spreading over the pilot’s tanned, regular features.

“I can see why they want you back on Corsha,” said Kurian, “but don’t think you can con me, Red! I have my own troubles without arguing with you.”

“So I’ve heard,” sneered Lanston. “Seems to me you people run a pretty lousy ship, or else why does the crew keep melting away?”

Kurian stepped closer, scowling.

With one muscular hand, he gathered the front of Lanston’s shirt.

“Now, look—I,” he began.

Lanston twisted free and shoved the pilot back with a long arm.

Kurian recovered his balance and thrust his face into that of the trader. He had to stand on tip-toe to manage it, but Lanston was made uncomfortably aware of the other’s chunky chest and breadth of shoulder.

“Just get this through that solid bone antenna hung between your ears,” Kurian growled. “If the Old Man says you’re to help the stewards to work out your passage, then you help the stewards! Or would you rather not eat from here to Johanssen III?”

“You picked me up on your own initiative,” declared Lanston, feeling distinctly ungrateful but convinced from his experiences with Axelrod that it was a mistake ever to yield an inch. “I’m entitled to passage—Ow!”

Kurian, crowding even closer, had trod upon his bare toes.

“Watch what you’re doing!” yelped the victim, hopping on one foot while he tried to hold the injured members.

“I will if you cut out all this back talk,” promised Kurian.

He slid open the door suggestively and took Lanston’s elbow in his big hand.

Lanston drew away and dropped his foot to the deck. He thought his toes must still be numb, for the metal did not feel as hard to his unshod foot as he expected.

Kurian, groping for a hold of any kind, slipped his hand down to the other’s waistband and started to drag him toward the doorway. Lanston hacked him across the forearm with the edge of his left hand to break the grip. Kurian muttered, and bulled him into the bulkhead, trying to pin him long enough to get a solid hold.

“All right, then!” said Lanston.

Kurian, misunderstanding, eased back a step. Lanston exploded an uppercut from down around his knees. It landed too high, on the cheekbone, but the pilot staggered back with a surprised grunt.

He fetched up against the opposite wall, recovering his balance just in time to save his head from clanging against the metal.

Get him first! Lanston warned himself, and sprang forward with his fist cocked.

From behind his own ear, he whipped across a vicious right. Kurian, still blinking, but with his hands up now, jerked his head aside. Lanston’s fist whistled past his left ear and sank into the metal bulkhead.

“Unh!” he grunted soulfully as Kurian countered with a jolt to the pit of the stomach.

He could almost feel his face turning white, and not from the effects of the punch.

His bright blue eyes bulging with horror, he stared at the bulkhead. For all he could see of his hand, the forearm ended at the wrist. He was suddenly aware of drops of sweat popping out upon his forehead.

His expression must have been ghastly, for Kurian pulled back the blow he had already started. Then he, too, turned pale as he saw what Lanston was gaping at.

The latter pulled gently on his imprisoned wrist.

A foot-square section of the bulkhead shattered softly, crumbling like a stale cookie about the spot where the fist had pierced it. Lanston was free.

“Wh-what kind of metal is that?” he whispered.

After a moment, he realized that he had not been answered. He turned to the pilot. Kurian looked decidedly ill.

Lanston backed two steps along the bulkhead. He rapped his knuckles on it at waist height, and was not reassured by the soggy dunk.

Like beating a cork gong, he thought.

“What kind of rocket have you got here, Kurian?” he demanded. “I hope the deck, at least, is solid!”

He stamped one bare foot to make sure.

“Careful!” shouted Kurian, rousing from his trance.

It was too late. Lanston had chosen the wrong spot.

“Yeeeow!” he yelled. His scalp prickled. “Get me out of this!”

His leg had plunged through the deck to the knee. As he sprawled forward with hands outstretched to break his fall, he felt the metal crumble away about the hole.

“Don’t move!” Kurian snapped, springing toward the wider expanse of the control room proper as if skittering over a carpet of eggs. “Newman! Monteforte! Get out of here on max jets!”

The incipient bellow of his voice did not fully disguise deep concern. As Lanston wriggled his foot frantically in the emptiness he could not see because of his sprawled position, the men on duty in the control room came sprinting to the rear.

“Easy there!” yelled Lanston at the same moment that Kurian roared, “Watch out!”

The double exhortation jerked one of the men up on his toes and he passed Lanston without incident; but the other, perhaps startled at the sponginess beneath his feet, took off in a frightened dive for the doorway.

He landed with a satisfying thump on a solid part of the deck, but the spot underfoot when he had jumped collapsed.

“Hey! There’s nothing under me!” Lanston cried.

He looked up to find himself alone. Kurian had moved out of his view.

Keep calm now, Bill, he coached himself. Slide up on it the way you did on the ice when you fell in skating!

Cautiously, he inched his way forward. He happened to be facing that way, and he had a suspicion that trying to turn back to safer territory would only make matters worse. When he probed gently back with one foot, not daring to look over his shoulder for fear or rolling his weight onto one elbow, he could feel nothing.

A little more, now, he thought, and I can grab that fire extinguisher rack.

A large, cold drop of perspiration trickled deliberately down his forehead and into his right eye, stinging him into blinking rapidly.

He reached out for the extinguisher rack, and more of the deck crumpled beneath him. Somewhere in the distance aft, alarm bells were ringing.

“Hunh!” Lanston grunted suddenly, wondering what had struck him.

He abruptly lost his sense of direction, becoming unable to orient himself in regard to “up” or “down.” “Oh, hell!” he exclaimed, realizing what had happened. “Kurian got the grav field turned off.”

The disappearance of the pilot was easily accounted for by the cutting of the generators and the sounding of the alarm bells. A moment later, Kurian returned, floating himself along the bulkhead to Lanston’s left front at shoulder height.

“Steady…hold out your hand,” he called, as he drifted across to the top of the rack toward which Lanston was straining. “There seem to be some solid spots left.”

Holding up his hand gratefully, Lanston saw the pilot’s fingers sunk gingerly into the bulkhead in a precarious grip.

Then his weightless body was hauled clear of the hole as Kurian stiffened against the tendency to pull himself downward toward Lanston. The latter looked back. The hole gaped blackly behind him.

“Not enough to walk on—even if we could walk,” grunted Kurian. “Straighten yourself out, and I’ll pitch you across. Hey, Newman!”

“Go ahead!” answered one of the pair by the door.

Lanston saw them waiting as Kurian maneuvered him around like a child’s toy balloon. He contorted and squirmed to get himself into position. Kurian gave a heave, sending him sailing across the intervening space. Lanston groped out frantically. He touched Newman’s outstretched fingers and was hauled past the doorway.

“Careful what you take hold of,” the blond youth warned. “It feels a little loose this side of the door too.” Then Kurian kicked off and flew toward them. Lanston reached out to help, but drew back his hand as Newman caught his chief.

“The first thing to do,” said the pilot, “is to clear out of here far enough to be safe.”

He glanced aft, whence a distant hubbub was already becoming noticeable.

“Monteforte!” he ordered. “Blast off and report this to the Old Man! Newman, scout the crew quarters! Lanston, help me get all the passengers out of Section Two!”

He flitted purposefully away in the wake of Monteforte, waving Lanston toward the first stairway to an upper level. A few moments later, the latter found himself knocking on a cabin door.

He would not have blamed the occupant for greeting him with astonishment, since he had overleaped his mark and been forced to knock on the door from the ceiling side.

Hearing no reply except a muffled shout, Lanston pulled himself down and slid the door open. It crashed back, teaching him to be wary of employing anything like normal strength to such habitual motions.

In mid-air before his eyes floated a slowly thrashing bundle of bedclothes. Estimating distance and angle carefully, Lanston flung himself at the bundle so as to carry it before him to the opposite wall, where an open closet offered handholds.

“Good God, boy!” exclaimed the lean, white-mustached gentleman who eventually emerged from the tangle. “Thought I was having a nightmare! What happened, boy?”

Lanston explained briefly that the artificial gravity had been turned off and that everyone was ordered aft to the next section. He sympathized with the old gentleman’s “nightmare” as he recalled having the same sensation when his fist had pierced the bulkhead.

He worked along the side corridor, which was beginning to show signs of life as various people clawed their way out of the cabins and along the walls toward the main passageway.

“Grav field trouble,” Lanston sang out repeatedly. “Everybody to the lounge!”

Having cleared that branch, he moved on to the next. The first person he encountered was “Willy” Boley, hanging in perplexity from a section of molding near the floor.

“Where’s Miss Knapp?” asked Lanston, prudently attaching himself to a wall hook from which a chart of the section had been knocked.

“Julie? Never mind that! Get me out of this! I keep falling ‘up’. What turned us upside down?”

“I’m supposed to check on all the passengers in this section,” insisted Lanston.

“Stateroom D-S, then! Now, will you pull me up? Never saw such a ridiculous condition!”

Lanston got hold of Boley’s jacket and yanked the chubby older man to a position that had some semblance of being right side up.

“Whew! That looks better,” sighed Boley, running a hand over his carefully arranged hair.

The motion moved him an inch or two off his feet. Lanston grabbed him again before he could begin to thrash about and make things worse.

“Better get back to the lounge,” he advised. “The Captain wants everybody out of this section. I’ll look for Miss Knapp.”

“Good—I mean…thank you. I said I’d go out to get help and find out what happened…and then—”

“I understand,” Lanston soothed him. “It’s tough getting around when you’re not used to being weightless. Let me give you a little tip.”

“Yes?”

“Take off your shoes. That makes it easier to handle yourself along the walls; you get a toe-hold here and there.”

Boley reflected.

“Sounds like a good idea,” he admitted. “Thanks.”

Lanston held him by the collar while he wrestled with the zippers of his shoes, then helped him toward the main corridor of this level with an energetic boost.

“Thanks a lot!” Boley flung back as he turned the corner.

Lanston collected the shoes from mid-air. He slipped them on his bare feet, finding them only slightly too small. Leaving the zippers open, he continued along the passage in search of other unwarned persons.

Number D-5 was at the end of the short hall. Lanston slid open the door and “walked” inside by holding firmly to the jamb. Julie Knapp sat frozen in a chrome and leather chair. Her knuckles were white with the force of her grip on the arm, and her ankles twined about the metal legs. The chair was upright, but about four feet off the deck.

“Oh, it’s you!” said the girl. Then her expression lightened with hope. “Well, do something! Get me down!”

“Funny,” murmured Lanston, as if to himself. “That’s what they all say.”

Julie Knapp looked at him. Down each cheek inched a large teardrop.

“Gosh, I’m glad to see somebody,” she said unsteadily. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here like this, wondering what happened. Is the ship wrecked?”

Lanston found he could just reach a drifting cushion and he tried for it with the idea of throwing it. The force should be enough to waft the girl toward the opposite wall.

“Well, is it?”

“Huh? Oh…no, not as far as I know. Kurian, the pilot, had to turn off the grav field.”

The cushion drifted maddeningly beyond his grasp. Lanston’s muttered oath was mercifully obscured by Julie Knapp’s sigh of relief.

“But then where is everybody?” she asked. “Willy said—”

“We’re all supposed to go aft to the lounge,” said Lanston. “I guess you’ll just have to give up that chair. Jump, and I’ll catch you.”

For the first time, as she hopefully wriggled about to set her feet against the edge of the chair seat as he directed, Lanston found the leisure to take a good look at the girl. She wore a wide-skirted dress of gold-flecked brown material that suited her coloring perfectly. When she hoisted it above her knees to clear the way for the jump, Lanston stared frankly at her legs. There was a mischievous glint in her brown eyes which hinted that she might overlook the boldness.

Far as I’m concerned, I mean it as an honest compliment, he thought admiringly. Now, if she lets go of that skirt on the way across, in this weightless—

“Here goes!” announced Julie. “Don’t drop me!”

Lanston was disappointed at the clever control she maintained over the billowing skirt, but he had nothing to complain of in the way she crooked an arm about his neck at the impact. He was thrown backward as the chair banged against the opposite wall from her kick and rebounded with a bent leg.

“You jumped too hard,” he grunted, wrapping both arms around her pliant waist and hooking one foot on the door-jamb to avoid being carried out into the corridor.

He considered whether he should escort her to the lounge or take her along while he searched for other trapped passengers. He recalled the numbers he had directed aft on their own, and decided that the section must be nearly empty. He presumed that Kurian or someone else had taken care of the part below the plane of the control room.

Might be nice to hang around and see what develops, he thought, but then there’s the chance that some more of the ship will come loose from its rivets.

Julie squirmed comfortably.

“All right; you caught me, I guess,” she whispered. “But how do we get away from here.”

“Yeah…uh…I guess we’d better get back,” said Lanston regretfully. “You ready to try it?”

“Sure. I’m not scared anymore, now that you’re with me.”

Lanston wondered if he should try stopping at his temporary quarters for his jacket—and some socks, at least. He decided to find out first how conditions stacked up when they reached the next deck.

Taking Julie by the hand, he pushed off toward the main passage. He was beginning to get the knack of weightless maneuvering, and they made it with little difficulty. At one point, however, he elicited a squeal from Julie by snapping off a light bracket he seized as a handhold.

“What makes it like that?” the girl gasped, pushing back a strand of golden brown hair from her eyes.

Lanston watched the fragments of metal scatter through the air as he flicked his fingers.

“I…don’t know, exactly,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find out when we get together with the rest.”

Julie held on to his hand a shade tighter, but asked no further questions. When they arrived at the stairway, the going was easier because of the handrail. Lanston left Julie at the head of the steps momentarily while he flitted quickly back along the passage to yell down each side hall. No one answered.

“Captain Lanston!” called the girl as he returned.

“Make that ‘Bill’ if you like,” he grinned. “What is it?”

“I think I heard somebody down there calling you.”

“Let’s go down and see, then,” he replied, starting along the handrail.

Halfway down, his body began to drag over the treads. A second later, his full weight returned abruptly, and he tumbled head over heels the remaining distance to the deck.

“They turned it back on!” he exclaimed.

The wind was knocked out of him as Julie landed across his shoulders. Before he could sit up, footsteps sounded and Kurian came out of a side corridor a few feet away.

“Oh, there you are,” he commented, ignoring Lanston’s betrayed expression. “This Miss Knapp?”

“That’s right,” Lanston grunted, helping her to her feet.

“Then everyone’s accounted for. Let’s get aft. The Old Man wants to seal off this section.”

“How come the grav field is back on?” Lanston demanded.

“Good enough reason,” said Kurian grimly as they hurried along the corridor. “We had a hull rupture in Section One! Air pressure! The Old Man figures the field is the lesser of two evils, being some restraint against everything bulging out.”

Lanston pondered this in silence until they reached the lounge, almost unmindful of Julie’s frightened grip on his hand.

They found that compartment crowded with milling people. Crewmen were posted at the exits to aid in dispersing the crowd to other recreation rooms and cabins in this section. The passengers, Lanston saw, were mostly scared and voluble; the spacemen seared and silent.

“Lanston,” muttered the pilot, “how about opening the bar and passing out drinks? Might brighten the place some.”

“I wish,” retorted the trader, “that you would get over this idea of making some kind of steward out of me!”

“I’d like a little drink. Billy-boy,” said Julie.

Lanston wavered, and Kurian added that the stewards were all busy. He produced the key to the bar.

“Oh, all right,” yielded the trader. “Get me inside!”

Pushing through the hubbub, he murmured in Kurian’s ear.

“How bad is it?”

“Who knows?” Kurian shrugged as he unlocked a door near the entrance. “That grav field must have been altering the structure of the metal, and I’m afraid it’ll get worse.”

“Yet you turned the generators back on!”

“They’ve been on for weeks. The ship must be on the point of becoming a sieve. This is just the last straw.”

Inside the compartment, he pressed a button. Wall sections concealing the bar that began a few feet away slid upward, and Lanston stared out at a sea of faces swiveling to stare back at him. Someone raised a cheer, and the sea surged forward.

“Have fun!” grinned Kurian, and eased out the door to struggle against the current.

“Young man!” called a stoutish woman in a red dress entirely too bright for her fading hair. “Can you mix a Sirian Sling?”

Glancing at the rest of the lineup crowding the whole length of the short bar, Lanston realized who would be in a sling if he wasted any time with fancy creations.

“No, ma’am,” he said bluntly.

Seizing the nearest bottle, he yanked the cork and growled to Julie, “Hand me a glass!”

He plopped the opened bottle and the highball glass down on the bar before the stoutish woman and reached for more bottles with both hands. Julie scurried along the bar, setting out glasses of every size and shape.

“That’s the way!” someone approved loudly. “Don’t fool around, Red! We may all be dead before we get it passed around!”

The speaker was promptly subdued by cries of protest. One complaining voice remained raised.

“Julie!” yelped Wilson Boley, his face even ruddier than usual with the effort of squeezing into a place at the end of the bar. “What are you doing in there? Come out immediately!”

“You’d better go,” muttered Lanston. “They are all gaping at you.”

“Am I hurting anybody’s eyes, do you think?” she demanded pertly, but yielded when Lanston gave her a little shove.

“I’ll help out, boy,” said a voice near the door.

Lanston recognized the white-mustached old gentleman he had towed out of one of the staterooms. He stepped aside at the door to let the volunteer in as Julie slipped out to the waiting Boley.

“Always wanted to be a bartender,” said the old gentleman. “I know a couple of recipes guaranteed to lay out this whole crowd stiff as a battery of rocket tubes. Oops! Did I step on your toe, sir?”

Boley glared in silent agony. Remembering whose shoes he wore, Lanston closed the door hastily and returned to his work.

Half an hour later, the passengers were still mostly voluble but definitely more courageous. Lanston had long since acquired two more volunteers, and leaned against an empty section of shelves to rest. The rush had eased and the press dispersed when he had deliberately overlooked the tendency of the more ambitious souls to carry bottles to various parts of the lounge.

He saw Kurian look in from the forward exit. After a moment’s hesitation, the pilot came toward him. Lanston stepped over to the door and slid it open far enough to admit the officer’s thick shoulders.

“What’s doing?” he asked.

Kurian examined him searchingly.

“I’m getting up a little group to check some of the emergency jets. Want to go along?”

“Why me?” asked Lanston. “Are volunteers that hard to get?”

“As a matter of fact…yes,” growled Kurian. “I’ll say frankly that I don’t especially like the way you got yourself pumped aboard here, and I still owe you for this eye I’m getting, but you at least don’t seem to scare easy.”

“Well…since you put it that way,” said Lanston.

One glance over his shoulder assured him that the situation was well under control. He reached a long arm under the counter and stepped back to the wing where Kurian stood.

“Here,” he said, holding up a bottle of Centaurian whiskey that he had marked down for his own. “A swallow of this will assist the takeoff.”

He expected Kurian to head for the nearby entrance to the second section, but the pilot took him to an upper deck by way of Section Four, which was occupied mainly by fuel and supply compartments.

“We have the airtight doors closed forward of Section Three,” Kurian told him.

“Think it’s dangerous up there?”

Kurian looked over his shoulder to meet Lanston’s eye.

“Don’t spread this around,” he said, “but half of the forward section has broken off. Air is leaking out of Two like money through a drunk’s finders. I’m afraid even the small rockets may be affected.”

Lanston digested this in silence, wishing he had stayed on Corsha.

Or at least on the Saphire, he told himself.

“Ah, here they are!” exclaimed a voice as Kurian slid aside a door and led Lanston into the anteroom to one of the ship’s airlocks.

Captain Stower looked again, and added, “Is that the only one you could find, Kurian?”

“It seemed like a good idea, sir,” answered the pilot. “Here’s a space-suit for you, Lanston.”

Lanston discarded Boley’s shoes and pulled on a pair of heavy socks someone offered him. He recognized among, the group the assistant pilot, Monteforte, and the grizzled spaceman who had rescued him from the Saphire. There were four others preparing to go outside, and several assisting them. No one looked particularly happy.

The spacesuited men began to pass through the airlock before Lanston was ready. Monteforte stayed to help, and they were the last ones outside.

The cold beauty of the stars merely accentuated the black emptiness. Despite the heating coils in his suit, Lanston shivered. The grav field was weak out here.

He trailed Monteforte toward the nose, where a group of the others were gathered with lights and cables. Someone thrust the end on one of these into Lanston’s gauntlet and pointed at a ring sunk in the hull. He shrugged to himself and looped the cable through, securing it with a couple of hitches.

What do they think they’re going to do—fly a jet on a half-inch cable like a kite? he wondered.

By the time he had finished, an emergency rocket was being maneuvered out of the space left by a retracting section of the hull. A space-suited figure that moved like Kurian crawled into the port that had been left open. The end of the cable was passed to him, and then several of the men lifted the small vessel clear of the hull. Monteforte pressed his helmet to Lanston’s.

“I’d like a picture of that,” his voice penetrated the metal. “Even if it isn’t as hard as it looks.”

The emergency rocket slowly drifted a few yards away. Kurian disappeared inside for a few minutes. When he came out to crouch in the exit with one hand on the cable, he seemed to be watching the timer on the chest of his suit.

“What’s he going to do?” Lanston asked, leaning over to touch helmets with Monteforte.

“See if it stands up under the rockets.”

Jets suddenly flared at nose and tail of the small ship. They were obviously minimum strength and matched to neutralize each other.

“How does she look?” Kurian’s voice sounded over the suit radios.

“Not bad,” answered somebody. “Satisfied? Or do you want to try a stronger—Look out!”

The nose of the jet puffed out in a flare of silent brightness. Immediately, the remaining part began to pick up speed forward.

Warned by the shouts, Kurian leaped clear of the exit port where he had waited. He shot over their heads, gripping the end of the cable.

Lanston, watching the pilot, did not see the subsequent explosion that shattered the emergency jet before it had traveled a hundred yards.

What did catch his eye was the anchored end of Kurian’s cable cutting through the ring in the hull like a wire slicer through cheese.

“Hey!” he yelled as he nudged Monteforte. “Get hold of something!”

He snatched up one of the cables lying lightly on the hull and shoved the end at the assistant pilot. Then he leaped after Kurian with the other end clenched in his gauntlet.

The pilot had-been partially halted by the waning resistance of the crumbling metal, but he was drifting away into the void. Lanston shot up alongside him, hoping that something would anchor Monteforte. He grabbed at Kurian’s leg.

Something felt wrong with the contact. The next instant a whining noise filled his ears and the tiny motors of his air circulator began to labor.

“Chee-rist!” he muttered. “I’ve sprung a goddam’ leak!”

Half paralyzed with the horror of it, he had forgotten leaving his radio on. Kurian thrashed about and grabbed the cable from him.

“Haul us in fast!” the pilot roared. “He’s got a leak.”

Lanston felt the acceleration as they were yanked down to the hull. He tried to clamp his gauntlet over the spot on his forearm from which air was escaping, but he could not see the tiny hole. He feared to squeeze, lest the metal of the arm section crumble.

Then they were down, and space-suited figures rushed him from one handhold to another and into the airlock. One tumbled in with him and tore open the inner door as soon as the closing of the outer permitted the minimum of air pressure to build up. Air puffed into the chamber, and Lanston staggered out into the anteroom where willing hands helped pry him out of the suit.

“What happened out there?” demanded Captain Stower.

Monteforte, who had come through behind the ex-trader from Corsha and opened his helmet, told him while Lanston caught his breath. He saw the crewmen looking at him and wondered if his face were white.

I’m not in the market for another scare like that, he thought.

He weighed the chances of getting anywhere in the emergency rockets, and decided that they were decidedly dim.

“Captain Stower,” he said. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Go ahead,” said Stower heavily. “I’m running out of them myself.”

“Much as I hate to face the fact,” Lanston declared slowly, “I’m afraid this bottle of yours is coming apart at the seams.”

“Also between the seams,” Stower sighed. “Get to it!”

“And trusting the emergency rockets is taking a big chance. But if you could spin the Nova enough to brake with the main drive—”

“Yes?”

“Maybe,” said Lanston, “we could pick up my ship.”

“Oh, nuts!” growled the other with a tone of disgusted finality.

Crewmen nearby who had paused to listen muttered profane disappointment. Lanston held Stower back by the sleeve.

“Wait a minute!” he insisted. “It’s worth thinking about. You didn’t have interstellar speed yet. We’re not even twenty million miles out from Corsha. The Saphire is good for that far—with a little luck!”

“I thought she was about to blow up when we took you off!”

“Oh…that,” mumbled Lanston. “I…er…might have exaggerated just a little.”

He saw Stower begin to scowl as he figured it out.

“At least, she isn’t crumbling apart!” he added.

“Well…” Stower hesitated. “I’ll see what Kurian says about the emergency jets. You have one point—there isn’t anywhere else we can get to in time.”

Lanston found a bench under a rack of spacesuits and kicked some odds and ends off it so he could stretch out. When Monteforte re-entered the airlock, he thought for a few seconds of offering to go along. Then he changed his mind.

1 took MY chance for this watch, he thought. Let some of these other heroes take the next.

Twenty minutes later, another man was brought in with a faulty suit. The waiting crewman swarmed over him, peeling off the spacesuit.

“Pass the word for Doc Bergman!” ordered Stower. “And hand me one of those slings for a tourniquet!”

Lanston took one look at the foot between the bodies of two crewmen. It was grotesquely puffed and red with blood from ruptured arteries. Freezing had occurred too late.

He sat up on the bench, but there was nothing for him to do. The injured man was presently carried away, and Stower turned to one of the pair that had brought him inside.

“What’s the story out there?” he demanded.

“Mr. Kurian decided the rockets based in Two and Three aren’t much good. The ones aft, around the rocket room, don’t seem so bad yet.”

Captain Stower glanced thoughtfully at Lanston.

Another half hour passed, and the men outside began to come in by twos and threes. Kurian was last. As he was being helped out of his suit, he confirmed the advance report.

“There are four I’d say were safe, and another pair good in a tight choice,” he said wearily.

Stower beckoned Lanston over.

“Tell him your bright scheme!” he said.

Lanston explained. To his surprise, Kurian raised no objection. Lanston realized that the pilot was worried. He decided that when Kurian was scared, it was time for everyone else to start running.

“I set my course to the same curve you used,” he said to clinch the argument.

Stower darted him a sharp look, and Lanston had to explain that part of his escapade. Kurian and his superior eyed each other.

“It might be done,” said the pilot.

“We’re doing it!” decided Captain Stower. “It’s the only chance. You get a few minutes’ rest while I talk with McLeod in the rocket room!”

He bustled out of the compartment. Kurian glanced at the crewmen straightening up and turned to Lanston.

“Think there’s any chance of sneaking a bottle or two from the bar?”

“If there’s one left, I’ll sure try,” Lanston replied. “Shall I bring some knockout drops, or do you really think we’ll make it?”

“We have a chance,” said Kurian soberly. “It’s lucky that it seems to be working from the nose aft. I don’t know why…the coils extend all the way through the ship. Maybe the field draws more power at a distance from the generators aft, so the effects were noticeable in the control room first.”

Lanston left him slumped on the bench and wound his way back through the next section to the lounge.

He found the latter compartment somewhat cleared by the retirement of those who had become excessively cheered. Julie and Wilson Boley were not to be seen. Lanston frowned.

Of his eager assistants, only the white-mustached gentleman still stood leaning cheerfully on the bar. He was now slightly rumpled, but greeted Lanston with a wicked wink.

“Come slumming, boy?”

“In among my betters, Pop. Is there anything left?”

He wished he had gone for his jacket while there was time. Or his shoes, for that matter. He examined the pair of untouched bottles held out for his inspection.

“Got anything to wrap them in, Pop?”

The other glanced around vaguely.

“Wouldn’t want to see the last survivors hi-jacked, boy,” he said. “How about this fellow’s jacket?”

Lanston craned his neck to see the floor behind the bar. Two inert bodies, one of them clad in a borrowed white jacket, snored gently beneath empty shelves.

“What size shoes would you say he wears?”

On his return trip, he hurried because announcements of an impending change of course were beginning to flow over the public address system. One of the testing gang intercepted him in an upper corridor before he reached the airlock anteroom.

“Mr. Kurian said to tell you we all moved in here.”

Lanston followed the man into what had evidently been a storage compartment. When he unwrapped the white coat from his burden, his welcome was assured.

“We came back here because the Old Man sent word he’s going to clear Section Three,” explained Kurian. “I don’t know where he’s going to put everybody. I s’pose I’ll have to go help in a minute.”

Captain Stower, however, managed without calling upon his chief pilot. In the uninsulated compartment, they clearly heard the rumble of a steering rocket. For several minutes, Lanston was confused as to “up” and “down” despite the continued functioning of artificial gravity.

Finally, Kurian said, “They’ve got her around. I’d better go. Lanston, have you got your identification light data for the Saphire?”

“In my jacket,” said the trader glumly. “I left that in the Galactic Suite!”

“Never mind. I’ll have one of the boys climb in a suit and fetch it. You’d better see if you can catch forty winks while we brake and calculate the probable time of interception. We’ll have our work cut out for us, sighting your ship with only the instruments of the emergency rockets.”

Lanston accepted a place atop a heap of empty plastic bags after Kurian left. For a while, he listened to Monteforte discussing the situation with the crewmen; but the assistant pilot and a couple of the others who were rocketmen were presently summoned away.

Then the deceleration began, causing a general shifting about of the odds and ends the men were using for seats.

“The hell with this,” grunted one of them finally. “I’m gonna look for a better place. Wish I was a rocket-man and had a bunk back here instead of in the part that’s fading away.”

In a few minutes, however, he returned to report disgustedly that passengers were clogging the corridors and other storage compartments as Captain Stower enforced his safety measures against the chance of a leak in Section Three. Lanston rolled over and tried to go to sleep.

He wondered briefly if he stood any chance of finding Julie Knapp in the confusion. He decided regretfully that Wilson Boley was doubtless looking out for her. The rumble of the main rockets, now pointed in the direction of flight, continued.

He remembered later waking up when a dozen or so of the passengers were added to the company around him. Then, still later, a hand shook his shoulder roughly.

“Somebody to see ya, Cap,” announced one of the spacemen.

Lanston sat up, rubbing a hand over the sprouting stubble on his chin and shaking his head. The compartment was snugly filled with people who seemed to be doing little but staring at their hands. Julie Knapp stood in the doorway, beckoning.

Lanston rose and stepped cautiously over sundry sleepers. He followed Julie outside. She led him a few yards to a nearly empty side corridor. Lanston thought it must be a runway for inspecting the walls of the fuel tanks.

“Hungry?” asked the girl, holding up a napkin-wrapped package.

“Well…now that you mention it—”

“I got Higgins to give me a couple of sandwiches when he was passing out what he called supper. Billy-boy…?”

“Yunh?” Lanston grunted encouragingly around a mouthful.

“They say you really are a captain with a spaceship, and that we might transfer to her. Is that right?”

“Mostly,” he admitted. “Depends on whether Kurian and the others can spot her in space. We were traveling on the same curve, but…there’s a lot of room out there.”

Julie sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a forefinger.

“I knew you’d save us, ever since you came and got me in my stateroom when the gravity was off! I guess you thought. I was pretty awful.”

“Now, why would I think that?” demanded Lanston.

“Well, I laughed at you when…when—”

“Would have laughed myself. It was funny… I suppose.”

“And then Willy went and left me because he said he wanted to be in the corridor leading to the escape rockets, and I didn’t know what to do except try to find you.”

Lanston frowned.

“By the way,” he asked as casually as he could manage, “who is Boley? An uncle, or something like that?”

Julie looked at him wide-eyed.

“Oh, no! I never met him till we both got aboard on Klajarrok—that was two planets before Corsha. But he kept following me around…and…and I guess I just got used to him.”

Lanston grinned to himself. That did not strike him as being much of a habit to break.

Just as he dropped a hand gently upon her shoulder in preparation for ending the lingering pause in the most satisfactory way, he heard his name being called in the outer passage. Julie slipped her arms about his waist.

“Billy! I’ll bet they’ve found your ship!”

“Did they have to—I mean… I sure hope so. I have to go see, I’m afraid.”

Julie stood on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. Lanston decided that Kurian could shoot over in a rocket to examine the Saphire, but Julie drew away at last.

“They’ll be looking for you,” she murmured. “But you won’t forget me, will you?”

“Don’t worry about that!” said Lanston, trying to calm his racing pulse. “When we transfer, I’ll see that you and I go together.”

He forced himself to leave her there and elbowed his way along the outer corridor until he caught up with the steward who was paging him. It was Higgins.

“They want to confer with you in the main rocket room, Captain Lanston,” said Higgins, his blue eyes popping with glad cordiality.

Owning a spaceship really gives a man swank, thought the trader smugly. Must try never to be without one.

He found the ship’s officers gathered about a desk in the engineer’s section of the rocket room, where Captain Stower had set up headquarters after evacuating Section Three.

“For a while, I thought we’d be driven right into the tubes,” he told Lanston. “The two forward sections are so much junk by now. We’ll just have time to abandon—with luck!”

“You picked up the Saphire?” asked Lanston eagerly.

“Mr. Kurian spotted her just as we were about to give up.”

Newman moved aside as Stower spoke, and Lanston saw Kurian slumped on a stool beside a panel of rocket room gauges. They were all tired and unshaven, but the pilot seemed exhausted. Lanston squirmed inside as he noted the swelling about Kurian’s eye. Then the other looked up at him and grinned, teeth very white against his tanned face.

“You’re coming with me in the first rocket,” he told Lanston. “We’ll need you to save groping around when we get inside. She’ll be about three miles away by the time we’re ready.”

The party was organized with a minimum of confusion. Higgins and the tow-headed Newman, who had volunteered to rig a collapsible air-tube on the Saphire’s entrance port, and Lanston were issued spacesuits. Kurian settled himself in the little control bay of the rocket, and the nearest dozen passengers were jammed in behind. Julie Knapp sat wide-eyed behind the pilot, occasionally throwing a smile to Lanston at his post by the tiny airlock.

It seemed to take hours, during which they were once more weightless, to reach the old ship. Lanston sweated inside his suit and fidgeted nervously when Kurian began an endless series of petty, jiggling blips on his steering rocket.

“What did he do, get lost?” he whispered to Newman.

“Not him!” murmured the other. “Better get your helmet screwed on; we must be there and he’s trying to lay us in close to her airlock. Here—check mine, will you?”

Lanston checked him and Higgins, and was checked. Newman tapped him on the shoulder and they entered the airlock one at a time.

Lanston was the first one through. He stared at the looming hull only a few yards away, and seconded Newman’s faith in Kurian’s skill. A magnetic grapple shot across and clung.

Never thought I’d be so glad to see YOU again, he thought.

Higgins erupted from the airlock with a bulky package. When Newman joined them, the three of them fitted together the metal attachments that would clamp to the airlock ports and extended the plastic tube.

“Your honor, Captain,” said Newman over his suit radio.

He pointed to the Saphire and thrust the end of the tube toward Lanston as Higgins finished clamping the opposite end down.

Looks awfully thin, the trader thought. Glad I’m going over in a suit!

With a boost from Newman, he floated across to the old rocket’s airlock, which opened without difficulty. The others leaped and relieved him of the tube. They began to clamp it to the port from the outside as soon as Lanston got in.

The first thing he did was to turn on more lights. He regretted the power wasted because of the ones he had left burning when he abandoned, but the darkness of space had made him appreciative of such luxuries. Glancing about before making the jump, he had been utterly unable to spot the Nova. The two or three flashes from other emergency rockets on the way had merely intensified the lonely feeling.

He shucked out of his spacesuit after a quick check of the air pressure, and ran for the ladder to the storage decks. After the grav system of the Nova, it felt queer to experience the shift of weight every time he passed a deck on his way down toward the jets.

The passengers were already coming through by the time Lanston had thrown open two of the holds. He buttonholed a capable-looking youth to put in charge and told him where he might tap the water supply.

“You’ll have to make yourselves comfortable the best you can,” he concluded. “Julie! You come with me to the control room. I want to make radio contact with the others.”

He led the way up two ladders to the deck just under the control room.

“This is about the best cabin,” he said, showing her the entrance. “Make yourself at home!”

“Is this your spaceship?” asked Julie, eyeing the rust spots on the bulkheads with distaste.

“Well…she’s not fancy, but she goes—I hope!”

By the time he made radio contact, Kurian had already pulled away and headed back for the Nova. Until the completion of the complex operation, Lanston remained a sort of traffic director. All the Nova pilots were hard at work. He grew hoarse from talking them into position, but was too busy to worry about where the people were going.

“You mean it’s the last?” he cried as Monteforte reported he had Captain Stower with him.

They let him off for long enough to shave and wash up while there was still water to spare, but insisted that he be in the control room when they spun the ship to brake and get up speed toward Corsha.

“Frankly,” Stower put it, “I’d be afraid to touch anything in this spare parts bin!”

Someone found a blanket to fold in a corner of the deck, and Lanston lay on it when they let him. Every so often, one of the pilots would inquire why this gauge indicated zero temperature in the rocket room, or whether it was safe to trust the automatic air-analyzer. Lanston did the best he could, but sensed that they doubted the sanity of anyone who blasted into space in a rattletrap like the Saphire.

But she’s still in better shape than their fancy tub, he consoled himself. She might even make it back to Corsha.

As the hours wore on, he kept hoping but had to admit that things were getting uncomfortable. After one quick visit to his old cabin, which he found occupied by six men and women, he avoided asking how the passengers and crewmen were making out. Like sardines, he could see for himself. He wondered where Julie had taken herself and worried about her disappointment at the condition of the Saphire.

Can’t blame her, he reflected. I was glad enough to leave when I thought the Nova was safer.

“The air’s getting a little thick, isn’t it?” he asked Kurian as the Nova pilots changed “watches” much later.

“We’re trying to stretch it,” muttered the pilot. “Do you realize we’ve been aboard nearly a day?”

Lanston raised an eyebrow and glanced about the dingy control room.

“Holding up pretty well, isn’t she?” he inquired smugly.

Kurian groaned. “Whatever made you think you could take this antique into space and get away with it?” he demanded.

“Had no choice,” Lanston shrugged. “My last credit went for this hull. If she doesn’t last back to Corsha, I’m bankrupt as well as dead!”

“Ummm,” murmured Kurian. “Well, we might get out alive. The Old Man is going to radio Corsha for ships to meet us.”

Lanston considered this. It occurred to him that there was now leisure to worry about his plight in case he did not die. He would land upon Corsha under a cloud, to put it charitably.

I’d better see Stower before he radios, he thought.

The planet swelled from a bright point to a crescent to a half-lighted globe. They were lucky in that their approach was from north of the system plane.

“I’d hate to have to dodge a meteorite group in this,” was the way Stower put it.

He agreed good-naturedly to Lanston’s request, however; and when they at long last approached Corsha’s atmosphere, he called the trader to listen in as he contacted the ships hastily sent up to take off the passengers.

“No, we’ll have to use your emergency craft. We abandoned ours… Yes, we still have the air-tube connected… Who—Lanston? They agree to drop all possible charges? Good! It’s the least we could do for him; there would have been a major tragedy if he hadn’t…er…offered the use of his ship…”

There was more, about the order in which the rescuing ships would approach, but Lanston was satisfied.

That should hold Axelrod a while, he gloated, and went down to the next deck to search out Julie.

“The little eyeful with the bosom and the long hair?” a male passenger answered his query. “I saw her down on the next deck with old Moneybags Boley.”

The entrance to the main airlock, Lanston thought. Can’t she wait to get off?

He found them sitting on the deck near the airlock, with a score of others. Boley’s back was against the bulkhead and Julie rested coyly on his shoulder.

“In a hurry to leave?” he asked Julie, but he stared Boley in the eye.

The man took it upon himself to answer.

“You surely don’t expect Miss Knapp to remain on this rusty contraption a moment longer than necessary!”

Evidently irked at having to look up to Lanston, he rose. Julie also got to her feet. A moment later, several others did the same when two spacemen, completely suited, pushed their way to the airlock and entered it.

“The ships are here,” murmured several voices.

“I’m sorry if you misunderstood Miss Knapp’s concern for your safety—” Boley began once more.

“Let her tell me about that!” said Lanston brusquely.

“All right,” snapped the girl. “I will! Just because I brought you a sandwich once, you needn’t get ideas! I don’t like the way you put on airs, pretending you were captain of a spaceship when all you owned was this smelly wreck!”

“But, Julie! How about when you—?”

“How about never!”

“See here, Lanston!” blustered Boley. “I can’t permit you to annoy Miss Knapp any further. She needs the protection of someone like myself, with resources sufficient to take care of her properly.”

“Take an eclipse!” Lanston told him impatiently. “Julie, listen to me! I—”

“You penniless, planet-hopping tramp!” she shrilled at him. “Willy, get this redheaded gawk away from me before we miss the rescue rocket!”

Lanston gaped, experiencing a hollow sensation amidships. As he stared, forgetting Boley, a fist swished out of nowhere to thud on his left cheekbone.

He staggered, more in surprise than in hurt, and Julie completed his overthrow by kicking him heartily in the shin. Lanston’s feet went from under him. His skull rang against the bulkhead on the way down. He remembered thinking vaguely how much healthier that bulkhead sounded than the one on the Nova.

The airlock was opened and a stranger in a fresh uniform stepped out.

“All right, folks!” he called.

“Who’s for the first trip? Don’t rush, lady—there are four other ships waiting!”

Lanston shook his head and hauled himself to his feet. He attracted a few curious glances, but most of the interest was directed to lining up for the departure. Captain Stower pushed his way forward from the foot of the ladder to confer with the Corshan officer, and remained to spread words of calm and confidence among those who crowded around the airlock.

Boley and Julie were among the first to leave. Lanston felt his eye tenderly and slunk up the ladder to his old room, where he sat upon the now-empty bunk to add up the score.

You bonehead! he reproached himself. When you think back, can you remember one kind word out of her except when she thought she needed you?

Kurian found him studying the mouse under his eye about half an hour later. Lanston listened to the jubilant report that everyone had been gotten off, but did not turn from his sour contemplation of the mirror.

“What happened to you?” asked Kurian.

Lanston told him.

“I don’t hold it against the fat slob,” he said. “He just doesn’t know any better. But it kind of hurts to find out you’re a nit-witted ass!”

“Oh, come on, now!” laughed Kurian. “With that little girl, there’s been many another shorn lamb, I’ll bet, and there’ll be more in the future. You ready to go?”

“I think I’ll try to land her,” said Lanston.

“What?”

“Got nothing to lose. If I can sell her for scrap, maybe I can eat for a while.”

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Captain Stower appeared.

“What’s the hold-up, Kurian?” he demanded. “Let’s go!”

“He’s going to ride her down,” said the pilot.

Behind Stower, Lanston saw the equally surprised faces of Newman and Monteforte. Stower flushed.

“He’s crazy!” he exploded. “Does he know how much fuel is left.”

“There’s just enough,” said Kurian slowly. “If it’s used carefully.”

“But he isn’t an experienced pilot!”

“I am, though. And I believe I’ll bear a hand here. The ship’s all he has in the world, sir. We owe him something.”

Lanston thought for a moment that they would drag Kurian off by force and return for him. Then he saw their expressions change before Kurian’s level stare. Stower shook his head sadly.

“They all soften between the ears in the end,” he muttered. “Well, good luck, Bill!”

Newman nodded wordlessly and Monteforte shook hands with both of them.

“I’d like to stay and help out,” he said, “but I’d rather live!”

They marched to the ladder. In a few brief moments, their voices died away and the door of the airlock changed.

“Let’s get up to the control room,” said Kurian soberly.

“Maybe we’d better not,” said Lanston, feeling guilty at having dragged the other into a wild scheme. “Can you really handle her?”

“Don’t worry, Bill! I haven’t been piloting for ten years without learning some tricks they don’t need on those luxury rockets. We’ll get her down or I’ll owe you for another ship!”

He began to work the tail around to hit the atmosphere first.

“Of course,” he admitted, “I don’t guarantee to pick the spot more than ten seconds ahead of time! I’ll try for the Capital City spaceport, though.”

“Any acre of jungle will suit me fine!” Lanston breathed.

Two hundred miles up, they reached noticeable air and Kurian sent Lanston down to the rocket room to watch for danger signs. The Saphire went into a braking orbit.

Fifty miles more of drop, and Lanston began to be bothered by the slant of the deck despite the gravity plates. He also became conscious of strange groans and vibrations about him.

One hundred miles up, something outside gave way. The old Saphire went into a noticeable wobble as the thunder of the main rocket battery turned slightly ragged.

“A tube blew, I think!” Lanston screamed over the intercom.

“Better get up here,” answered Kurian.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Nothing—yet! But it’s the best place to watch the landing from. Not so much, weight to fall on your head if…if we come down a trifle fast.”

Lanston gave up watching the inaccurate gauges and ran for the ladder. He was nearly shaken loose by the increasing wobble and, on the next level, by a blast of air funneled in through some rent in the hull; but he fought upward, clawing for handholds on the rungs and trying to remember how to pray…

Over the capital city of the planet Corsha the shadows were lengthening as the colonial world placidly spun its other face to its yellowish primary.

Consul Axelrod pursed his lips as he sat behind his painfully trim desk and stared casually at the spinning hand on the face of the electric wall clock. A casual observer might have thought him engrossed in some weighty diplomatic problem. As a matter of fact, he was considering two of them.

He had just solved one by deciding that he might with a good chance of success invite his blonde receptionist to dinner that night at his private residence. It did not seem like time yet for another trinket or one of the Corshan pearls he had been presenting her.

Then, there was the matter of the Nova.

Naturally, the consulate must do something for Stower and his people, he pondered. A dinner, or some such welcome to celebrate escaping a catastrophe that would have seriously injured the reputation of—

He struggled briefly with the mask of his inner self, but failed to prevent its slipping a trifle. Was it the reputation of Terra that gave, him concern? Or that of the spaceline in which he happened to have a modest investment?

“Well, of course, the reputation of every Terran organization affects that of the mother planet,” he murmured smugly.

Which brings up the problem of that young puppy, Lanston, he recalled. There’s that agreement, yes; but it will never do for me to appear to condone his skipping out. I wish I knew how he got on the right side of Stower—

His intercom buzzed, and he heard steps outside his door. Hastily, Axelrod straightened primly in his chair and slipped on what he considered an expression of dignified competence. He believed firmly in keeping up appearances at the office.

The door swung back abruptly, but the tramp of feet was low-heeled and anything but petite. The recipient of the inquiring, fishy stare that had resulted from Axelrod’s being alerted was Bill Lanston.

‘Hello, Mr. Axelrod!” he greeted the consul challengingly.

Axelrod’s other eyebrow crept upward as he viewed Lanston’s disheveled air and the yellow-green swelling under his left eye. His lips twisted coldly before he realized that another man had followed Lanston into the office.

“See here, Lanston!” he said. “It will do you no good to…uh…influence the spaceline officials to bring you over here in another attempt to worm you passage money out of the consulate funds.”

He paused as he got a better look at the second man. A sudden doubt rose in his mind.

“Er…that is why you are here, I presume?” he queried.

He felt a vague twinge of anxiety, seeing that the fellow looked almost as disreputable as Lanston. His brown hair was rumpled and the neck of his sweaty shirt hung open to expose a brawny chest. This second man also seemed to have a puffy discoloration around his eye.

“That is why we’re here,” Lanston agreed firmly.

“We?” asked Axelrod weakly, turning back to the lanky redhead.

“We. Both of us. Allow me to introduce John Kurian.”

“How do,” said the second man.

Axelrod eyed him warily.

“Mr. Kurian, being a space pilot,” said Lanston, “assured me that under the provisions applying to distressed spacemen—entirely apart from the awards we may demand for the use of our rocket, the Saphire, in the Nova rescue—”

Axelrod’s pale face took on an unhealthy flush. He half rose behind his meticulously arranged desk as he stabbed a forefinger at a pushbutton.

“You-you-you—” he choked.

He gave up the attempt to find a satisfying term whose use would not undermine his diplomatic dignity. With his other hand, he pointed shakily toward the door. Lanston clucked his tongue.

“Maybe we’d better give him a day to think it over, Johnny,” he remarked. “I’m sure Mr. Axelrod will do something for us when he learns that we’re now neighbors of his.”

“N-neighbors?” gasped Axelrod in horror.

“Accidentally so,” replied Lanston, smiling brightly at him. “You see, in the haste of trying to set down before that old bottle popped and scattered us like rain, Mr. Kurian was unable to aim carefully. We hoped to miss the city here, but—”

“But…?” whispered Axelrod, almost pleadingly.

“But the people told us the hill the Saphire is balanced on is part of your garden. Your house is all right—until the next high wind! Unfortunately, we-can’t afford to pay for having the ship moved.”

“I…uh…believe we may be able to do something for you,” Axelrod sighed. “Terra, you know, likes to take care of her own.”

“Uh-huh,” said Lanston. “When they take care of themselves! Come on, Johnny!”