Part 3

... Elbert Avery worked feverishly over the pile of papers before him. Today's lesson had included a few facts necessary for his calculations. To make room for new pages, he shoved aside Harling and Bame's _Astrogation Handbook_. "Matches for irresponsible brats to play with," he sneered at the book, "and the sooner they get their tootsies burned the sooner they'll learn to leave this stuff alone." He clenched a fist. "Damned if they're going to bankrupt one planet they can't run to settle another one they don't need." He picked up a stilo and plunged back into the determination of the exact point on the course, the precise moment after turnover, at which, with the slightest increase in deceleration he could send the _Colonia_ streaking irrevocably into the sun....

* * * * *

The Quarter-Way Party, three months and four days out in space, was an unqualified failure, according to Arnold Forsberg, the _Colonia's_ recreation director. Closeted with Captain Daneshaw in the conference room the following evening, he confessed, "Only about eighty people showed at all. They wouldn't dance, they wouldn't sing; only about three tables of bridge and one of eincheesistein, and those were the champions who play every day anyhow. They wouldn't even eat--just picked at the special non-diet refreshments we thought would be such a hit. Most of them didn't bother to dress formally. They just wandered around. Honestly Tim, with ten more months to go I don't know what we're going to do."

"Maybe they have other things on their minds," Tim placated. "First Night Out Party was as gay as they come. A lot of the women have been studying pretty hard, you know; and we've all been conditioned to taking things calmly for the last fifty years at least."

"You think maybe we'd better cut out the Turnover's Over Ball and the Three Quarters Party? I'll be hanged if I can stand a couple more flops. It's bad for general morale."

"You're taking this too seriously. Why not start working on the next shindig right now--you know--contests and such to have final playoffs at the party and such. Get them to start thinking about it. After all, you don't even know why there were so few...." The ping-ping-ping of a tiny bell indicated pilot-room intercom and Tim flipped a switch.

A plasticoid box on the wall spoke in Elbert Avery's dry tones. "Off duty now, Tim. You want to see me?"

Daneshaw spoke to the box on his desk, "Forsberg's here," he said. "You might come up and give us your opinion on the party. Were you there?"

"No, I was here. What happened, Arnie? The little ladies and gentlemen get rough over their grog?"

The recreation director twisted guiltily in his chair and muttered, "Wish they had!"

"No, El. Party seems to have been rather unpopular. You might canvass a bit on your way up and see if you can get a line on it. We'll have to cheer up Forsberg here if he's going to get back to keeping us gay."

The wall-box returned rather grumpily, "I trained for astrogator, not public relations. See you," and went dead.

* * * * *

Elbert Avery cleared his communicator, glanced once more at the position-calc dials, rotated his chair and stood up. Slipping on his officer's braidjac, he nodded curtly to the Second Astrogator and went out into the corridor.

Twenty feet up the dark passage was the first of the eight rearward porthole stations. Avery slipped into the niche beside the observer's chair, and the watcher, sensing the astrogator's presence, shook his head vigorously against the hypnotic glitter of the stars and looked up. "How's it go?" from Avery.

"Go? Who's going anyplace? Stars sit still, we sit still just looking." Watcher Peters' voice was flat. "You sure anybody's going somewhere?"

Avery ignored the question. "Have a good time at the party last night?"

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

"Just don't like travel, eh?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A few more compliments and why not?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

"No."

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

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

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

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

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

"I guess so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do or die."

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

The captain and recreation director looked up at his entrance.

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

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

"And?" from Daneshaw.

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

"I see."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not quite. What is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"If you want to," reluctantly.

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

"I ... I suppose."

"Miss the pretty nurses back at the hospital?"

"Oh no."

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, I'm not very important."

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

"I guess so."

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

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

"Yes."

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

"No."

"All right, then. Push the button."

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

"All fixed up?"

"I expect so."

"Was it bad?"

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

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

"I don't think so."

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

"Well ... no."

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

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

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