The Other Side of Nowhere

Chapter 2

The steward with straw-colored hair let them into the Rim Star's personnel lock. Braden regarded him without approval. He said curtly:

"Take these men to their quarters, Steward, and impress on them that though you may be the steward of this ship, I'm the mate. It might be a good idea to remind yourself, too!"

"Yes, sir," said the steward deferentially. "I will, sir. I'm sorry that in trying to be helpful I offended you, sir."

Braden scowled. He went up the circling succession of ramps and stairways to the top of the ship. On the way, now, he took more careful note of the long ascent. This time he particularly noticed the hinged panels which would open upon catwalks between the enormous holds of the ship. He observed the monitor-boxes in detail. They would faithfully report to panels in the control-room the physical conditions where they were located, and each of them could be used as an intercom in case of need. The catwalks behind the hinged panels would allow any part of the ship's skin to be reached from inside.

The ship was truly gigantic, though she carried a crew of only six men. Now there'd be only five, with two officers and the steward. On duty, every man would be remote from his fellows. There was, of course, no engine-room crew because Lawlor space-drives had no moving parts to be tended. A ship's drive was inspected by highly trained technicians at spaceports, and that was that.

Out in space, the ship would have the feel of a silent, tremendous prison, moving through emptiness on some errand of her own. It seemed incredible that so huge a structure could be controlled by so small a number of human beings. A tour of duty would be a period of isolation, and there should be no sound or movement anywhere in ninety-nine per cent of her volume. Her corridors should be echoingly empty. Guiding her would be the concern only of computers and integrators and other devices sealed safely away, never to be touched except in port and by specialists. Men on board so vast a mechanism would tend to feel insignificant.

But as Braden went, frowning, to report himse on board, he was not thinking of such matters. He was reporting according to orders, two hours before lift-off. He had no time to familiarize himself with all the minor points which made this ship an individual and which a mate should know much better than the palm of his own hand. The skipper was responsible to the owner for the management of the Rim Star, but Braden was responsible for everything by which the managing was done.

He reached the upper corridor-straight where the ascending route was curved; better-lighted, with glow lamps everywhere instead of thirty feet apart as in the center of a corridor's ceiling. He came to the officers' area and saw a cabin door with MATE painted on it. He opened the door and dropped his ship-bag inside it. He went on and tapped at the outermost of the three doors he'd passed through on his way to the skipper the night before.

The skipper's voice rumbled.

"Braden, sir," said Braden stiffly. "Reporting aboard."

The rumbling again.

"Any special orders, sir?" asked Braden.

The skipper did not tell him to come in, but Braden heard him rise. He opened the door of his cabin. He was a huge man.

"What special orders do you expect, Mister?" He blinked at Braden, through eyes almost closed by fat. "Don't you know your work?"

"I do, sir," said Braden, "but it's less than two hours to take-off. That's when I was ordered to report. If I'm to assign duty to the crewmen and make the regular check in the control-room, I won't have time to go over the ship as I should. So I'm asking for orders."

The skipper rumbled deep in his throat.

'The steward can assign duty to the crew," he growled; "and he's checked the ship. I told him to. He's perfectly capable, Mr. Braden! Been with me on two long voyages. You check the control-room. That's your special order!"

Braden flushed angrily. The skipper added sardonically:

"You can put it in the log, Mr. Braden! Put it in the log!"

He closed the door and Braden's hands clenched. Checking the controls was the most necessary of all the duties of a mate before a ship lifted off. But everything was necessary! A spaceship is practically a gigantic robot, and inspections and tests are the price of its proper operation. It can be designed to respond to an extremely large number of stimuli on the "if-this- happens-do-that" order, but it can only respond to happenings that can be predicted. In an emergency that has not been foreseen, any automatic device is helpless. But Braden was angered at the steward's having done the work that should have been done by him, that is part of a mate's duty.

He went to the control-room. He met nobody. Naturally, for in a ship nearly a quarter of a mile long, a crew of six men - or five - is spread thin. Passengers do not count, for they stay in their cabins and the steward sees that they are fed. So far as the mate is concerned, they can be ignored.

The control-room walls were almost solid banks of instruments. They ranged from hull- temperature repeaters to CO2 readers from every compartment and section of the hold; from the extraordinarily complex communication system which was completely useless in overdrive, to the screens which, out of overdrive, showed the stars of the galaxy in their places. There were the controls for the ship's emergency rockets which had never been fired since the builders delivered the ship, but which were to land her on Handel's Planet at the end of the voyage. There were levers for lights and pumps and firefighting in case of need; and there were dials, and rows of tiny lights which glowed green when what they reported on was functioning correctly, but flared crimson if there was trouble.

Braden began a conscientious, infinitely painstaking verification of the ship's condition as shown by her instrument banks. Some things could be corrected in space if they went wrong. Thus an improperly seated cargo door could be sealed, or an air leak stopped. Even malfunction of the air-renewal apparatus could be corrected easily enough. But if the meteor- detection equipment went wrong during lift-off not much could be done off ground. A jammed scanner could be serious before the ship went into overdrive. The most infinitesimal precession of a direction-gyro could be tragic after. The ship's drive, though, was in duplicate and was sealed, with only one unit used at a time. That had been inspected by the airport specialists, and Braden checked the certification.

It took the best part of the less than two hours at his disposal to complete the whole job. When he had finished he pressed the log-button and dictated the results of his inspection, giving the exact readings of some hundreds of dials, with check-readings under simulated changed conditions, the certifications of space-stowage by the spaceport crew, the read-off mass of ship and cargo together, and an enormous mass of deadly dull but necessary information which had to be recorded before lift-off. When he finished he pressed the port recorder-button and the log to date was transmitted by microwave to the spaceport record file in a matter of seconds. The skipper's order to omit part of the inspection outside the control-room - normally required to be made by the mate - was included at the end.

There was no glamour in such work. It was routine. But the taking of some thousands of tons of cargo on a journey of a light-century and more, and its delivery at the end of it, were bound to involve routine. The unexpected and the unprepared-for are highly unpopular in space. Furthermore, the Space Patrol disapproves. Tle Patrol insists that forecastle tales about the Other Side of Nowhere do not explain the absolute disappearance of well-found ships in space. It blames such cases on the omission of detailed and meticulous inspections before a ship lifts off - and the evidence is on the side of the Patrol.

The log-tape rewound and stopped. Braden threw off the switch. The skipper came into the control-room.

"Check-up complete, sir," said Braden.

The skipper rumbled acknowledgement. He glanced around the serried rows of instruments. He flicked on the vision screens. - There were no ports to see through, of course. Cameras are better than the human eye. - The spaceport looked strange from this height. The landing-grid itself was higher, but the other ships on the tarmac looked small, like toys. The trains of cargo trucks winding here and there - empty trucks to be loaded again, and loaded ones to be unloaded - looked like children's Playthings.

"Five minutes to lift, Mr. Braden," rumbled the skipper. "Cargo doors checked. The crew's at lift-off stations. If you want to call someone to bid them a fond farewell..."

"There's no one, sir," said Braden. "Maybe the passengers should be told, though."

"Tell them if you like," growled the skipper. "I'll have nothing to do with them. Didn't want them. Groundlings should stay aground!"

Braden pushed the general, communicator button.

"Passengers, attention!" he said curtly. "The ship is about to lift off. You can watch through the vision screens in your quarters, if you like. That is all." He lifted his thumb from the button. "Yes, sir. Anything else?"

The skipper rumbled. Apparently he rumbled as a necessary preliminary to speech; he made sounds first and then formed them into words.

"I don't know you, Mr. Braden," he said sardonically. "I never saw you before or ever heard of you. But this I say; you'll find this like no voyage you ever made before!"

"So I understand, sir," said Braden. "We're carrying the biggest weight ever lifted in one ship and we're to land that biggest weight by rocket. So I'm told."

The skipper grunted.

"I didn't have that in mind. You're plainly a very conscientious young officer, Mr. Braden. If you didn't bring a blaster aboard - against all rules and regulations of the Space Patrol - I shall think it remarkable. And if you did..."

"Yes, sir?"

"Officially, I shall deplore it. I warn you, Mr. Braden, I run this ship my own way!"

Braden said matter-of-factly:

"That's your privilege, sir. Meanwhile..."

"Not disturbed, eh? Sure of yourself, eh? Staunch character?"

"Not necessarily, sir," said Braden. "You're right about the blaster, though. I do have one."

The skipper made a sound that Braden could not interpret.

"In that case, Mr. Braden," he grunted, "I advise you to carry it."

The sound came again from the skipper. It was oddly like a chuckle. But then the field- detector buzzer made a humming noise. The force-fields of the spaceport grid were closing about the ship. The hull-temperature indicators flickered as the fields touched and shifted. Eddy currents formed and warmed individual plates, and moved to other ones. The fields at first were small - 100-kilowatt energies and upward. But the Rim Star's mass became centered in the complicated, intangible powerfields. The ship was enveloped by an invisible web of energy. Somewhere over at the edge of the spaceport, men with control-levers in their hands watched instruments and fed power to the grid-coils. The input to the grid went up from 10,000 - 20,000 kilowatts to 50,000.

Then multiples of megawatts. The ship stirred. She wavered.

She lifted.

Slowly at first, she rose to the half-mile height of the circular steel structure which enclosed the spaceport, which actually was the spaceport. The irregular ring of bare steel girders drifted downward. There was suddenly a horizon. The Rim Star had risen above the grid. It was possible to look for miles beyond the city's roofs. There were forests, very far away. There were hills. A river, not visible from the spaceport, flowed in unreasonable curves across the suddenly visible landscape. The ship continued to ascend. The city beneath shrank. The river dwindled and the hills diminished beneath the ship as she rose.

She went up and up. Presently the sky darkened and then the horizon was not flat but curved, and a little later the planet's surface was not bowl-shaped but visibly the near side of a tremendous globe. And the sky became even darker, and infinitesimal sparkles of light began to appear in it.

Now the ship rose at an ever-increasing rate. There was the tiniest possible jog when the ship's own gravity came on at lowest intensity. It would adjust as the ship went ever farther out, and no more than a similar sensation would be felt when the grid-fields cut off.

The skipper rumbled to himself. Then he said:

"Very good, Mr. Braden. I've taken over here. Now you can check the work the steward did for you. I'm sure it's competently done, but you can make certain - with your blaster available!"

His air was definitely sardonic. Braden said, "Very well, sir," and left the control-room. Outside, he found himself scowling. He hesitated for a moment and went to the cabin in which he'd dumped his ship-bag. He was annoyed with himself. On the face of it, it was absurd to anticipate trouble before the ship was even in clear space. If any began - and on a long voyage trouble is always possible - the proper course is always to bring it to a head before the troublemakers are ready for it. In such a case seeing a bulge of a certain shape in an officer's pocket very often quiets the most nerve-racked and ship-happy of crewmen. But at the beginning...

Braden scowled as he loosed the draw-cord of his bag and put his hand inside.

Within a minute, he had the bag empty. His clothes were folded as neatly as when he'd put them in. There was only one sign that his bag had been touched.

His blaster was gone.

His jaw clamped and he went cold with rage. He could report the theft to the skipper, for it was a distinctly ominous matter. The actual purpose of the voyage included taking a risk that had never deliberately been taken before, but the skipper was apparently welcoming trouble in addition. He was no ordinary merchant-ship skipper. Braden had been challenged by his manner. To report within half an hour after lift-off that his blaster had been stolen would probably amuse the skipper.

There was, plainly, only one thing to do, and that was to say nothing about it. A blaster in the forecastle would call for action under any circumstances. Braden must take that action before it could be expected. Meanwhile the ship rose and rose. Braden should check the items assigned to the steward to do - against all reason. He must go on as if he did not know about the blaster's theft until the time came for violent action to recover it.

He ground his teeth as he repacked the ship-bag. He put it where it had been before. As he went out of the cabin, his hands were clenched into fists.

He started the check-over that should have been made while the ship was still aground. Outside, the planet just left would be a distinct ball, with seas and continents and polar icecaps. It would hang unsupported in space, which was unbelievable even to a man who saw it from a ship that was leaving it. It dwindled and dwindled, which seemed equally improbable. It was no less inconceivable that the Rim Star had lifted and was lifting from the planet on fields of force projected from a spaceport which was not even a speck on the now-minute world.

Outside, of course, the huge ship did not even look like anything made by men. She was bulbous, ungraceful. Floating in emptiness, she looked like a preposterous shape in preposterous motion.

Presently she swung, aimed herself, and moved visibly in a new direction. Now, from close by, her meteor-detectors could be seen to twinkle, scanning the arcs of emptiness before her. Her drive produced no external effect - no wake, no plume of rocket-smoke. She was driven by the Lawlor units that are not used for lift-off from a planet because of the monstrous winds they create. But they'd been used to cross interplanetary distances in the first solar system. When overdrive was developed and a ship could be enclosed in a force-field which changed the physical constants of interstellar space, the same conservative Lawlor drives continued to operate. But the speed attainable in overdrive increased beyond imagining.

It was not wise, though, to go into overdrive in the ecliptic plane of a solar system. A ship had to get well away from the most probable orbit of celestial debris before building up to so high a velocity.

The Rim Star drove on and on and on. Since she had aimed herself to leave the plane populated by comets and celestial debris, she seemed to be imbued with purpose. She still did not look like anything man had created, but rather like some monster creature swimming abstractly toward some destination of its own choosing.

It was two hours out from lift-off before Braden had completed the check of those last items he should have seen to before leaving ground. He'd found each member of the crew at his post. He regarded each one with a bristling disapproval which was expected. Each one answered such questions as Braden put with precision and apparent respect, but the feel of things was wrong. The five blank-faced crewmen said nothing and did nothing that he could cavil at, but they shared an air as of hidden amusement, of secret laughter. Braden suspected that they knew about the theft of his blaster, but didn't know he knew it yet.

He'd left the last of them and was on his way to the passengers' quarters when he realized what was really basically wrong about the way the crew acted. A ship's crew scatters when she ends her voyage. Men do not sign on together for long voyages out of friendship. When a ship leaves port, the members of her crew are usually strangers, bringing neither personal hatreds nor personal loyalties to their joint imprisonment in a spaceship's metal hull.

But these men were difterent. If they were the same ones who'd jumped him in the spaceport, they formed a unit - organized and tested and confident of each other. Their solidarity did not come from membership in the same ship's crew. They'd waylaid Braden by mistake - it was almost certain - and then waylaid another man but not by mistake, after him. That man was now in the hospital instead of aboard the Rim Star. Somebody, too, had jumped the man who'd been mate before Braden. Probably these same men.

When Braden went into the passengers' quarters he'd added things up. He looked like a thundercloud. The passengers weren't yet as settled as they'd be presently. The steward smiled brightly at Braden when he walked into the passengers' saloon.

"Ah, Mr. Braden!" he said warmly. "The passengers want to talk to you, sir! I told them my authority is limited to doing things to make them comfortable. But you can pass on their idea, sir."

Braden said unpleasantly:

"What is the idea?"

"Just a moment, sir. You'll want to talk to... Ah, here he is! Mr. Duckworth, this is Mr. Braden, mate of our ship. Second in command, you'd say. He'll hear your request, Mr. Duckworth, and at least take it up with the captain."

The man called Duckworth was small and bustling, with an air of fretful impatience. He gave Braden a professional smile.

"We want to take pictures on the Rim Star, Mr. Braden," he said crisply. "While we're traveling. That is, we are a production unit going on location to Handel's Planet to take background shots and some action, set-pictures and so on, for a broadcast tape story about the Other Side of Nowhere. Miss Derr Carmody is the star. Mr. Fortescue plays opposite her. And the Rim Star's a splendid set. We can use her interiors for a good many scenes before we get to Handel's Planet and have a good lot of footage all wrapped up. I asked the steward to explain this to the captain and arrange things so I can look the ship over and plan my shots. I might want members of the crew - off duty-time, of course - to act as extras. Possibly we could work you and the skipper in."

His manner was assured, confident. There was a stirring, and one of the two women passengers came out of a cabin. Braden recognized her. There'd been a pin-up of her long ago in the Hansford's control-room. But that was a picture of her when she was young. Now, Braden knew detachedly, she'd had a rejuvenation job and probably persuaded herself that nobody guessed it. It wouldn't show under tape make-up, though.

"Derr," said Duckworth confidently, "meet Mr. Braden. He's first officer of the ship. He'll arrange for us to shoot the scenes we need on the ship. Mr. Braden, Miss Carmody."

Braden nodded acknowledgement. Derr Carmody gave him a warm and luminous but completely professional smile.

"Oh, yes!" she said. She tended to coo. "It's so good of you, Mr. Braden!"

Another passenger popped into view - a middle-aged man with a harried look and disconsolate expression. Still another young man, with the expression of someone who knows he will take a good picture if somebody aims a camera at him. Then a girl - quiet, not happy, not glamorous. At another time Braden would have excepted her from the category of women he'd rather not bother to talk to. Now, though, he had a lot on his mind. He nodded curtly when introduced to the disconsolate middle-aged man, a cameraman named Hardy. He nodded again, impatiently, when the young man who looked like an actor was introduced. His name was Fortescue. The quiet girl's name was Diane. She wasn't an actress, but a cameraman, like the harried Hardy, and Duckworth explained proudly that they were specialists of a very high order in camera work. They could get incredible pictures under conditions most cameramen would find impossible. They could make tape cameras sit up and beg. Hence the small location-party for a big picture. But they needed to make some scenes on the Rim Star.

"I don't think," said Braden ungraciously, "that you'd better count on picture-making for the present. This isn't a passenger ship. Passenger activities aren't encouraged. Without the skipper's express permission you may not leave these quarters."

"But we need to!" the director said indignantly. "The traffic agent assured us we'd have the run of the ship. Within reason, of course, but... we've scheduled this production! We've a deadline to meet! We've got to do some shooting aboard ship!"

Braden shrugged his shoulders and went out. The steward followed him. Braden swore when the door to the passenger cabins closed behind them.

"See that they stay put," he said angrily to the steward. "We can't have them roaming around everywhere!"

"Indeed not, sir," said the steward anxiously. "I'm very much concerned, sir. I'm terribly afraid the captain was indiscreet in choosing the crew, sir. I don't like them!"

Braden looked at him. Hard.

"It's their manner, sir," insisted the steward. "You expect newly signed-on men to be truculent, sir, when they first come aboard. They try to browbeat each other as if they wanted to establish who's to be boss of the forecastle right away. But these men are quiet, sir! Right at the beginning! They act as if they know each other and don't have to settle anything like that. I don't like it, sir! In fact..."

He hesitated, and Braden said coldly,

"Go on!"

"It... wouldn't surprise me, sir," said the steward in a lowered tone, as if he didn't want to be overheard, "I wouldn't be surprised if there were... were... I hate to say it, sir, but there might be - knives aboard."

"It would surprise me," said Braden coldly, "If there weren't. Arms in space are quite illegal, but I've never known a ship yet whose officers didn't have arms to use in case of need, or a forecastle in which there wasn't some sort of weapon. It's the possibility of weapons - law or no law - that keeps forecastles from becoming cages of animals when nerves get tense."

He turned away. There was a click and the door to the passengers' quarters opened. This was just after Braden had informed the passengers that they must never come beyond it. He turned angrily. Fortescue had come out. His face brightened when he saw Braden.

"Mr. Braden!" he said anxiously. "May I speak to you a moment? I hoped I'd catch you before you'd gotten too far away!"

"I just told you," said Braden formidably, "that the passengers are to stay in their quarters without exception!"

"But it's important!" insisted Fortescue anxiously. His face had lost its expression of being ready to be photographed. He looked genuinely uneasy.

"All right," said Braden. He nodded dismissal to the steward. After the steward had left, he said, "What is it?"

"I want to argue a bit, Mr. Braden," Fortescue said uncomfortably. "You seemed to think we won't be able to use the Rim Star for a set in the picture we're slated to make. If I may explain..."

"The skipper will decide," said Braden inipatiently.

"But we took passage on the Rim Star," said Fortescue urgently, "just so we could take the scenes the script calls for! When we land on Handel's Planet we'll take the ground shots, and then we're scheduled to be lifted by space-boat to one of the ships, that guide the drones there! We have to take these scenes on the Rim Star, Mr. Braden! You've no idea how important it is!"

"I know," said Braden, "how important it is that you in your quarters!"

"It's Miss Carmody's career!" protested the actor. "She was famous, once. Then she lost out. Finished! Now she's got a chance to hit the top all over again. There's never been a tape about the Other Side of Nowhere! What if it is only a tall tale? Everybody's heard of it, but nobody's shot it! The script's magnificent! It's her chance... And mine too, of course, because I play opposite her. I'm explaining this so you can make the captain see how important it is! I want you to know what it means!"

"There are things," said Braden grimly, "that are a lot more important to me than that just now!"

He turned away.

"I should have known!" Fortescue said bitterly. "Dammit, I should have known!"

Braden went on his way. As a matter of routine he should report the condition of the ship to the skipper but he was angrily aware that the skipper didn't care whether he reported or not. But the removal of a blaster from his ship-bag was something the skipper should know about. It was important. As a merchant-space officer it would be dereliction of duty if he didn't inform the skipper of it.

The control-room door was shut. He tapped on it, saying,

"Braden, sir!"

"Come in!"

He entered. The skipper was seated at the tape coder, tapping the dots and symbols which would be instructions for the ship's astrogation apparatus. At the moment the ship was driving herself on the preliminary course that would take her beyond the abstract plane surface on which the sun's satellites should have their orbits. Scanners now watched for meteoric masses. They would warn in plenty of time for avoidance, if it became necessary. Once in really clear space, the skipper would aim the ship with infinite precision and turn over the controls to the astrogation unit. It would handle the ship from then on. Everything in the ship was a machine which did what it was expected to do, barring accidents. Only the tape coder was a tool which men used to make the ship - as a machine - carry out their instructions.

"I've a report on the state of the ship, sir," said Braden formally.

The skipper flipped the log-switch. The tape began to move.

"All hull and interior equipment is functioning normally," said Braden. "The crewmen are at their posts and on the alert. The ship, as such, is operating perfectly."

He paused, and the skipper ffipped the switch to OFF.

"By your look," he rumbled, "there's something else and it's tricky. I'll have you tell me off the log before we decide whether it goes on record. What is it?"

"Somebody," said Braden grimly, "went into my cabin and took my blaster out of my ship- bag."

The skipper blinked, and then chuckled. He shook all over with amusement.

"The steward," said Braden grimly, "overheard every word you and I said last night. Taking me down to the exit port, he asked me questions - oh, with great deference! - that showed he'd been eavesdropping. I accused him of it and he admitted it." He paused. "I told you that I had a blaster aboard. I told you. Nobody else. But twenty minutes later I went to get it and it was gone. I lay it to the steward."

The skipper shook, rumbling with laughter. Braden was raging.

"Mr. Braden," said the skipper genially, "luckily your mishap isn't in the log. It would be serious to have on your record your admission that you broke the law by bringing a blaster aboard! It would be taken very seriously if we made port! So I shall ignore it officially. You can, of course, try to get your blaster back. That is your affair. But there is one thing! You will not bother the steward! He has shipped with me on two voyages before this one! I value him! Your dealings with the crew are your business. I will not interfere. But you will leave the steward alone!"

He chuckled, rocking back and forth in the coder chair, which was so inadequate for a man of his bulk.

"Go get your blaster back, Mr. Braden, if you can do it without disturbing the steward. But I specifically order you to leave him alone!"

He turned back to the coder, pecking out the tape orders that would send the Rim Star more than a hundred light-years to the near neighborhood of Handel's Planet with not less than two breakouts from overdrive on the way. He copied the symbols, using one finger, squinting wisely at the typed sheet from the spaceport course-room.

"The ship's operating perfectly, sir," said Braden. "I'd like to speak with all the crewmen at once. When can I call them from duty-posts?"

The skipper turned. Then he swung about in his chair. He considered, chuckling again.

"I give you ten minutes now, Mr. Braden," he rumbled. "Ten full minutes. I will stay valiantly on debris-watch while you impress our sturdy crewmen with the idea that you are not to be trifled with!"

He watched with a sort of genial malice while Braden pushed the general communication button and said:

"All hands attention. All forecastle hands to the forecastle at once. Repeat: All forecastle hands to the forecastle at once." Then he said, "I'll see what can be done, sir!"

He went out, bitterly angry. The situation was much more serious than one blaster pilfered, though that was serious enough. There was trouble ahead. He must try to bring it to a head before the troublemakers expected, and in a way they would not anticipate.

He headed for the crew's quarters. On a ship as large as the Rim Star, the difference between the design of a spaceship and a seagoing vessel is enormously accentuated. A ship designed to travel on an ocean ignores the weight of her fabric, but everything is cramped to make it possible for the smallest object to be pushed through a resisting sea. A spaceship subordinates physical size to mass. If landing-grids worked efficiently on spheres, spaceships would all be simple globes because the largest possible object with a given mass is a sphere. There is no need to economize on size in a spacecraft; hence interstellar ships are roomy beyond the imagination of a groundling. One consequence is that a man can be very lonely on a fully manned freighter. He is a very small pea in a very large pod.

Braden was alone, a long curved corridor stretching out before him. His footsteps were completely silent. There was absolute stillness all around him. He regarded the situation with aversion. He was the mate of the Rim Star. The skipper's behavior was anomalous. Instead of the suspicion with which a normal ship captain views every deviation from the normal, he had thrown discipline out the air lock even before lift-off. He'd allowed the ship's steward to perform the duties a mate is most jealous of. He was amused that his crew had tried to prevent Braden from joining the ship. He'd been indifferent when a previous mate was sent to hospital - very probably by his crew - and was followed - almost certainly the work of the same individuals - by the man who should have been sixth of the unrated members of the ship's company. The skipper was amused that a blaster was loose on the ship. He'd ordered Braden not to interfere with the steward when it was absolutely certain that the steward had eavesdropped on him. He...

Braden broke stride when a thought came to his mind. After an instant, though, he went on. No. It couldn't be that the skipper believed that the control-room was fitted up with a listening device, and had spoken as he did because he believed he was overheard! That would be unthinkable! No skipper could possibly allow such a thing! No skipper...

Braden went to the group of roomy, separate cabins required by law and common sense alike. Considering the monotony and the long, long journeys involved, men simply couldn't stand enforced continuous close contact with their fellows.

He turned in to the crew's quarters.

All five of the signed-on hands were there, waiting for him. They looked at him with blank expressions, but there was a feeling of laughter in the air. The very expressionlessness of the five men mocked him. They'd come aboard and dumped their ship-bags as he'd done. They'd been on duty ever since. They were no more settled than he was, except that unquestionably they had a common purpose and a very clear idea of how they were going to accomplish it.

"I called you men here," said Braden without preliminary, "because I don't like a lot of things about the way this ship has been set up for a long and dangerous voyage."

He didn't mention his missing blaster. They expected him to demand it forcibly, so he ignored it.

"The five of you tried to jump me last night," he said acidly. "And I was a little bit too gentle with you so you were still able to jump another man - the man you thought I was - a half- hour later. I think you've got ideas. I don't like those ideas. I think you've been cherishing them too long. I want to change them."

He looked from one to another. Although one man's features were scarred and battered, he showed no signs of recent conflict. A hard-faced man had a new cut on his chin, and another man had a purple bruise on his cheekbone. A chubby man had an expression of insistent innocence and there was a lean man whose eyes were sharp.

Braden rated them in his mind. Men who are isolated for long periods form themselves into groups according to certain patterns. There is an automatic assigmnent of roles. One man is always the leader. Another one is the docile butt of jokes. Still another does what the others tell him. Then there are second leaders and third leaders, and so on. The man with the battered features had gotten that way because he was told to do the fist-fighting for the rest. The chubby man was the squirming, flattered victim of their jests.

Braden pointed at the lean man with the sharp eyes. "Empty your ship-bag," he ordered curtly. The man stared at him, astounded.

"Empty it!" repeated Braden.

"What's this?" demanded the man. "I been on plenty of ships, but nobody ever..."

Braden hit him. The four other men started. It is strictly contrary to law for a merchant-ship officer to hit a crewman. The sharp-eyed man went down and Braden turned to the chubby man with the innocent expression.

"Empty your ship-bag," he ordered coldly. "Now!"

The chubby man stared. His mouth dropped open. He looked helplessly at the others.

Braden hit him. And then he pointed at another man. But the one with the battered face roared and charged. The other two lunged ...

But Braden had a strictly personal advantage. He'd been raised on a high-gravity planet, and consequently he had high-speed muscular reactions. A small boy has to move faster to catch a ball in a 1.7 G. world than to catch one under normal gravity weight-conditions. Since, as a boy, Braden had played under such conditions, he moved faster than average when he had to.

So he did not need to fight in conventional fashion. He snatched up a ship-bag and used it as a flail, knocking the man with the battered face halfway across the cabin into crashing contact with a wall. The ship-bag burst. He snatched up another bag as he saw a blaster come tumbling out of the spilled contents of the burst bag. Braden heaved the second bag at the legs of another man and jumped the last man with ruthlessly battering fists. In all this he followed the sound rule that one should never do the expected in a barroom-style combat. He'd hit without warning, twice. He'd used a ship-bag - not an intimidating weapon in itself - and cracked a man's head against a wall. He'd tripped another man with a second bag - the man had certainly expected almost anything else. He'd fought the last man along strictly orthodox lines because that man just dimly realized that Braden didn't fight in any standard fashion.

The man who had been tripped was crawling toward the blaster from the burst bag when Braden put his heel on the outstretched hand. The man howled.

Braden picked up the blaster. He raised his heel.

"Pick out your ship-bag," he said gently, "and empty it. On the floor. Now."

He had the blaster bearing, but he spoke without fury. The crawling man cursed. The blaster moved. The man emptied his ship-bag. Braden picked up a blaster and a knife. He matter-of-factly ordered another man to dump his ship-bag. He obeyed. The fighting at an end, Braden seemed to dismiss it as of no importance. He simply made each man dump his possessions on the floor of the oddly misnamed forecastle. He pocketed the three blasters and four knives revealed by a cursory inspection of the contents of the ship-bags.

"Think over what I told you," he said coldly. "I think you've had ideas I don't like. Change them to ideas I do like, and we'll probably get along. That's all."

When he closed the forecastle door behind him and walked away, he still hadn't mentioned his own missing blaster. But none of the crewmen had it. Besides, consideration of the overall situation implied a pause. But Braden had done all the pausing he intended to do. From now on he proposed to manifest very active officer-like behavior.