Part 2

Things--unpleasant things--seemed to pile up on him. He had suffered from migraine headaches before--but nothing like he did now. It was easier for his heart to pump blood to his head, and the minute enlargement of the blood vessels in his head caused splitting pains to shoot through it. He had noticed the headaches shortly after he had attempted to look through one of the ports. Not that they weren't there before--he had been too busy vomiting to take note of them. The ports were a fiasco in themselves. The practically solid beams of light coming through had blinded him temporarily, even when he wore sun-glasses; enough to show him that sight-seeing and human observation were out of the question.

And mixed in with all of these were the difficulties of getting around the small compartment. He could kick himself around, inasmuch as he was weightless in free flight, but the piping and equipment in the compartment turned it into a hazardous obstacle course. He nearly broke his arm, once, trying to stop from running into a bulkhead.

And there were other things. Embarrassing things. Or, considering he was alone in the compartment, just mildly annoying things.

After trying to look through the ports, he pushed back to the hammock and lay down. He could just as easily have rested floating in the air but the hammock was a great mental aid. He tried to keep his mind blank but snatches of thought kept running through it. Today was Friday on earth. About time for the evening meal. Fried perch and scalloped potatoes....

He groaned again. Nowhere on the examinations they had made out for the applicants was there a question asking if the prospect was susceptible to space-sickness.

* * * * *

Whiteford lay on the hammock and thought about what it had been like on earth a few hours before. It would be near quitting time and the five o'clock rush just beginning. Most people would be going home to a hearty dinner--he skipped that--and then a quiet evening with the television, or perhaps a ringside table at any of the local night spots where he used to entertain clients. There would be the many little tables with the clean, white tablecloths and the neat arrangement of polished silver, the glasses filled to the brim with sparkling clear water....

He rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth. It felt like fur. Sparkling clear water might be just what he needed. A few sips of ice water and a cold, wet-rag on his face would work wonders. Clear, cool, gushing, water....

He had to have water! He rolled out of the hammock and dove for the water tap. A split second later he remembered his first accident and twisted frantically in the air, trying to slow his momentum. He grabbed for some pipes that threaded through the cabin, missed, and hit the water tap butt first: the plastic panels at the front splintered and broke and the tiny aluminum tubing, scientifically designed to deliver water under conditions of free flight bent and crumpled.

Whiteford felt wet. He turned and grimly surveyed the demolished water tap. A few drops of water floated lazily, tantalizingly in the air. He _had_ to have water! A kit near the food locker yielded some cooking utensils and an old-fashioned can-opener, one end of which might serve as a crude lever. He had to wedge himself between the tap and the bulkhead to get leverage to pry with; otherwise, a hearty twist only resulted in his body turning a slow circle in the air.

The tubes didn't straighten very easily. Finally, the can-opener broke; a loss that didn't become immediately apparent. He grabbed the pipes with his hands and heaved outward. They bent. He heaved again and they bent still more. On the third heave he felt a slight pain in his side. He was exerting quite a bit of effort--effort which on earth would have made him sweat and his heart pump faster. He was sweating now but his heart wasn't only pumping faster, it was racing.

* * * * *

He grasped the pipes harder for a final effort. With a brittle snap, one of the connections burst and a few drops of water sprayed out at him. He didn't notice. He was holding his sides in pain while his heart took off like a race horse. The veins in his wrist swelled to the size of lead pencils and he could feel the throbbing pulse of blood. He floated stiffly in the air, half paralyzed by sudden fear.

When the pumping had slowed down he turned his attention back to the battered pipes. He straightened one of them out--being careful not to over-exert himself--and used it to suck the water through. The water was clear and cold but tasted a little of metal. It refreshed him and he began to think of something to go with it. Whether he felt like eating or not, it was obviously going to be necessary.

_It wasn't--too bad--so far. He could take the headaches and the nausea if he had to. There were--other things, though. Fear of what might happen. Meteorites, for one thing. Chances of his ship colliding with a speck of dust were ten million to one against it. But still...._

He went to the food locker and broke out a small electric hot-plate, a skillet, and a dozen eggs. The skillet was a little flatter than an ordinary one with a hinged cover to keep the contents in.

_It wasn't pleasant to think about.... The ship a drifting derelict, riddled and airless, with his body frozen as hard as stone floating on the inside. What rubbish! Let's see, a one kilogram meteorite with a velocity of ten miles a second hitting the hull ... probably fuse a section of it. Ten miles ... sixteen kilometers a second, approximately...._

Five minutes later, he was trying to coax an egg, floating sedately in mid-air, into it. He'd have the affair around it, hurriedly close the lid, and watch the air forced out from between the skillet and the lid push the egg away.

_A one kilogram meteorite at that speed could fuse about fifteen kilograms of hull ... about thirty-three pounds, enough to...._

The trick was to close the lid slowly. With that accomplished he discovered that grease wouldn't stay in the bottom of the skillet. Finally he filled the skillet with water and poached the egg.

... _vaporize a section of the hull big enough so he could poke his fist through it ... with a velocity of a hundred miles a second there probably wouldn't be enough left of the ship to identify...._

He dumped the egg into the disposal chute. He had lost his appetite.

* * * * *

Read the meters, list the readings in the log book. Note any changes between consecutive readings. Test the air, note the humidity. Read the meters, list the readings in the log book. Note the--oh hell, he knew the order by heart as it was. Under _Personal Reaction_ he wrote: _damn sick and tired of it. Ten days to go before halfway mark._

* * * * *

He flipped the switch that cut the light circuit and floated lazily in the dark. It was peaceful and quiet and his eyes closed in sleep.

_Tick ... tick ... tick...._

He jerked awake. What the hell!

_Tick ... tick ... tick ... tick!_

It sounded a little faster now.

_Tick-tick-tick-tick!_

The ticking swelled to a roar and then subsided to a gentle, purring _tick ... tick ... tick_!

He crouched there in the dark, straining for the sound, wondering what it was. It almost sounded like a slow-motion tabulator....

_The geiger counter!_

His heart skipped and a cold sweat broke out on his skin. There was a counter on board to warn against stray radiation. Not that there would be any--the Cameron-Smith energy converters were shielded so thoroughly that not even a single stray particle could get through.

_They were supposed to be, that is. Was it possible that the engineers could have slipped up?_

Pictures of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hideous with radiation keloids, flashed into his mind. A news story about radiation poisoning gibbered in the back of his imagination.

_Tick-tick-tick-tick!_

Sterility....

He flipped the light switch and floated over to the counter readings on the instrument panel. The row of tiny lights flashed rapidly in succession and the counter added another digit.

Stray radiation ... stray.... It came to him, then. For a moment he had forgotten that the counter was apt to read high, due to the increase in cosmic ray radiation once outside the atmosphere of the earth. He laughed weakly. What a thing to forget!

Something snickered in the back of his mind. _Yeah, what a thing to forget! And how will you tell whether the counter is reading stray radiation from the converters or the increase in cosmic rays? The engineers never make mistakes, though. Never? Well, hardly ever!_

The question of adequate shielding of the converters haunted him continuously.

* * * * *

By the sixth day out, Whiteford had become accustomed to the life in the cabin. He took it easy getting about and kept up with the business of the ship. By splitting the "day" into segments, as on earth, he managed to keep up a fairly normal routine. Sixteen hours on duty and about eight for sleeping, although sleeping wasn't too easy. He was rarely physically tired and made the mistake of trying to force himself to sleep. By the sixth "evening" he had developed into a first rate insomniac.

And by the sixth evening he was aware that the job of pilot was one of sheer boredom. It was dull routine with nothing to break the monotony but worry. There was no radio, no television, no telephone to shatter the silence. The first day or so he had whistled and sung to himself; now he hated the sound of his own voice.

He floated disgustedly in the hammock. He had read the meters, he had listed the readings in the log book. He had noted the changes between consecutive readings. He had tested the air and noted the humidity; he had listed his own physiological reactions from acne to watering eyes. He had cleaned and loaded the automatic cameras. All of which took about one hour out of every twenty-four.

He threaded his way over to the locker containing the books and games Burger had mentioned. Odd that he hadn't thought of it before.

This was more like it. Everything was designed to appeal to the businessminded type of man, which was all to the good. He picked up the thin books, printed on india paper to conserve weight, and frowned. One of them was almost a text on finance; ordinarily, if he could have curled up in an easy chair with nothing around to bother him, he'd be interested. The other book he had read before. That left one--and fifteen minutes later he discovered that he couldn't concentrate. His eyes bothered him and the type blurred; he was a little too sick to drum up interest in a book.

He went back to the cabinet and got out a popular parlor game. It was designed so that one person could play at it. The game itself was simple; based on a combination of finance and mathematics the object was to corner all the real estate on the board and "break the bank." It provided an hour of amusement. After that he discovered he always won; the board was _too_ simple--he had memorized the exact sequence of moves to win the game every time. The remaining game was a complicated three-dimensional chess set. This he discarded even sooner. He couldn't win at all.

He fell back on a deck of cards and tried to play solitaire but the cards were too slick and their weight wouldn't hold them down anymore. He would manage to arrange them in neat rows and then accidentally jar them and they would go skitting off through the cabin. He finally tore the pack in two with disgust and spent the rest of the day picking up the pieces from the various corners where he had thrown them.

His nerves were fraying rapidly. He couldn't shave and he couldn't shower. The air was dry--a little too dry--and he began to itch, a vague, annoying sensation that shifted over his body.

And the cabin smelled. The air purifiers worked to satisfaction as far as the meters were concerned but the odor of unwashed humanity still clung to the cabin. He had a hunch it would get worse as time went on.

He no longer bothered to prepare full meals for himself. He was too tired, he didn't want to go to the effort, he didn't feel hungry anyways. He ended up by nibbling on cold meats and bread at idle moments. With the change in diet, his face broke out in large, ugly splotches that bothered him considerably. Among other things, the diet he had been originally supplied with had been designed to avoid just that. If he had kept on the original diet ... if he had the energy to prepare a full meal ... if he didn't feel so damned sick ... if only that had been taken into consideration!

The steady, irritating ticking of the geiger counter worried him constantly. He could never be sure that the ticking was entirely innocent; he grew to have a superstitious dread of the rear bulkhead that stood between the cabin and converters. He unconsciously avoided it, keeping to the front of the cabin as much as possible.

Little noises startled him. If an occasional drop of water happened to collide with him in the cabin, it sent him into a raving fury--blood pressure be damned. He even derived a certain grim amusement from it, thinking of the times he had laughed at the typical picture of the apoplectic businessman.

* * * * *

On the eighth day, when making the check of the instrument panel, he noticed that the panel on the board reading "Manual Control" was lit; the one marked "Automatic" was out. In the middle of the board was the face of an oscilloscope with two hair lines intersecting at the middle. A small red dot, representing the rocket, should have been set exactly at the intersection.

It wasn't. It was at the bottom of the 'scope, almost off the face altogether.

_To hell with all engineers_, he snarled to himself.

He would have to jockey the dot back to the center before the automatic controls would take over again. If he failed, the rocket would be hopelessly off course, a tiny wanderer in space. The auxiliary chemical rockets, allowing for two degree corrections in the line of flight, would have to be used. They consisted of four sets at right angles to each other around the hull. By jockeying between them, he should be able to work the ship back.

He pressed the key for firing the portside jets. The next moment he felt himself hurled from his position and thrown against the left-hand bulkhead. The cabin exploded into a pinwheel of stars that quickly faded into blackness.

* * * * *

His head hurt and something that felt very much like oozing blood was sticking his eyelids together. He wrenched them open and rubbed his head with his hands, then wiped the stickiness off on the pilot suit. It _was_ blood, flowing from a cut in his scalp. Judging from the cabin, he had lost quite a bit. But the cut was of secondary importance.

He clawed his way back to the oscilloscope. The spot on the face had moved way over to the other side of the scope. He braced himself into position so that the sudden acceleration wouldn't affect him again. He pressed the key very lightly again and waited for the dot to shift. Sweat collected on his nose and stayed there. He shook his head and a spatter of drops flew off.

The dot on the scope shifted--too much. He felt weak. This was going to be a precision job; the slightest pressure on the firing stud might prove to be too much again. He'd have to jockey it back and forth until, by sheer luck, he hit the center of the scope. He could do it--but it would take time.

Five hours later a worn out, nervous Whiteford left the control panel and drifted wearily over to the hammock. He was dead tired--so tired he couldn't sleep.

* * * * *

It was the thirteenth day out.

A floating drop of water brushed lightly past Whiteford. He batted at it, swore, and began to cry; a peculiar sobbing that shook his whole body. He blubbered for ten minutes.

He was sick and hungry. The cut on his head begun to fester and his whole head throbbed with pain. There was a first-aid kit in the cabin but he felt too weak to get it. His beard itched and his body felt slimy; sweat didn't drop off but stuck and spread over his skin until it formed a thin coating.

_Just a poor little lamb who is lost in space, ha--ha--ha!_

The tune slipped into his mind and at the end he laughed with the chorus. He couldn't stop laughing. It built up to a hysterical roar that left him shaking silently in the hammock.

_Oh, Whiteford had a spaceship, its hull as white as snow; but every time he pressed the stud, the ship refused to go!_

That was hilariously funny, too.

He was sick, he was tired, he was dirty. He hadn't had enough energy or ambition to fill in the log books for the last two days.

Besides, who gave a damn?

He was just the stupid jerk who piloted the thing. What did it matter if he got killed in the attempt.

_My rocket started out for the star-speckled void, my rocket started out in great haste; but the g's were far too many for me, and I stuck to the bulkhead like paste!_

Burger and Maxwell had sent a rocket as far as the moon, hadn't they?

_He was sick--he didn't care whether he lived or died._

He was a sucker. A dope. A sick dope who wished to hell it was all over.

The moon was close now. If he waited until he got just a little closer and then pressed the portside firing stud, he could wreck their blessed rocket. Serve Burger and Maxwell right. As for himself, he was so sick of the whole thing that death would come as a relief.

That's what he'd do....

_My bonny, my bonny, my bonny so true, do you think you will miss me if I die in the blue?_

C day for Crack-up day! He put his thumb on the key and allowed himself five extra seconds of gloating. The company would have a tough time sending a wreath to his funeral. The company....

_Who in hell would run Personnel Incorporated if he failed to return?_ He nodded his head thoughtfully, faintly surprised that he hadn't thought of it before.

Who _would_ run the company? He was the only one who knew how. He _was_ the company. He had practically raised it all by himself to where it was now.

He took his thumb off the key.

And what would happen to the company's reputation if he failed to come back? That meant that their slogan no longer held--that they hadn't found the man for the job. And he hadn't kidded about the mottos. They had been capable of finding a man to do any job--even this one. Not just to go out on a job. To _do_ a job.

He had a sudden vision of Maxwell shouting gleefully: "I told you so! Personnel can't supply the man!"

Five minutes later he hardly remembered his desire to crash the ship. He thought fleetingly of the movies showing the crack-up of the first ship. Something pretty much the same as had happened to him must have happened to the pilot on the first flight.

He shuddered and kicked his way over to the first-aid kit.

* * * * *

The next day the ship began the long smooth curve that would carry it around the moon and on the last leg of the journey. Whiteford went to the panel board and pressed the key releasing the steel porthole caps. He pressed the key again and when they still didn't move realized they were stuck. It wouldn't be hard to find the trouble but....

It wasn't worth the effort. He didn't give a damn whether he saw the moon or not.

He drifted back to the hammock and went into an almost coma state staring dully at the overhead. He lay that way until time came for his next round of readings.

* * * * *

Two thousand miles out from earth the ship started the first of a dozen trips around the earth that would slow it down for a landing. Five hundred miles up the ship entered the first tenuous wisps of atmosphere. A hundred miles up, the air was screaming past the ship and the hull begun to get warm. Ten miles up Whiteford jettisoned the rocket tubes and engine over the Atlantic ocean. At the same time he released the double duty nylon parachute attached to the cabin.

Inside, Whiteford had begun to experience discomfort as his weight returned. It was an effort to move around and his heart beat seemed sluggish. His stomach sagged heavily and he thought wistfully of a gentleman's girdle. Water bubbled merrily from the broken water pipes and splashed unheeded on the deck.

The cabin thudded on something soft and Whiteford crawled to the hatch and opened it. The ship was floating on a large body of water. Waves slapped cheerfully against the hull and overhead a few startled gulls cawed angrily. A cool gust of fresh air blew in. Whiteford hauled himself erect and stripped off the pilot suit. He stood nude in the opening, inhaling the air in greedy gulps. It smelled as clean and cool as the conditioned air in his office at Personnel Incorporated.

* * * * *

"Ahoy, there!"

There was a boat a few feet from the hatch.

"Coming aboard!" They drifted closer and one of the men in the boat grabbed the ladder by the hatchway. Five men and a woman tumbled aboard.

"The Coast Guard at your...."

"I'm from the Daily Newsworld, Mr. Whiteford. I wonder...."

"What was it like in space...."

"You must have been simply _thrillllled_...."

Burger's bald head pushed itself forward. "How did the moon look to you, Mr. Whiteford?"

Whiteford had to think a little. "Come to think of it, I never saw it."

There was a dead silence.

"Oh, it's all on the films the automatic cameras shot. I wasn't too much interested myself."

The reporters frowned in disappointment but tried again.

"What do you intend to do now that you're back? Do the town, go on a fishing trip...."

Whiteford looked at them as if they had crawled out from under a rock. "Nonsense!" he snarled. "I'll get back to my office, of course!"

* * * * *

Maxwell looked at the president of Personnel approvingly. "I honestly didn't think you could do it, once I heard that you had gone." He paused and fumbled with his pipe. "Pretty tough, wasn't it?"

Whiteford knocked the ash off his cigarette and reached for the bottle of pills on his desk. "I wouldn't say so," he said expansively. "Just a matter of being fitted for the job."

Maxwell inspected his fingernails. "You didn't take the examinations your own outfit rigged up. Any particular reason?"

Whiteford looked annoyed. "I was technically qualified--engineering course in college. As for the rest, I successfully piloted the ship which should establish something on that score."

Maxwell twirled his hat self-consciously. A half smile played on his lips. "Oh, sure. Absolutely." He tamped his pipe. "You know, it's hard to visualize anybody wanting to go to the moon. It must be--well, some terrific drive that makes them do it."

Whiteford stared at him suspiciously. "What are you getting at?"

Maxwell looked innocent and gave an exaggerated shrug. "Why, nothing! Nothing at all. It's just that it seems ... seems so unusual that you couldn't find a qualified man, a completely _normal_ man who wanted to go!"

The temperature in the room dropped thirty degrees. "Implying," Whiteford said icily, "that I'm not quite sane?"

Maxwell stood up and chuckled. "Exactly. Hasn't it occurred to you that the qualifications you set up for a pilot were all wrong? When has a _completely_ normal man ever succeeded at _anything_ that was a little difficult? Why did you succeed? Because you're just a shade neurotic, because you've got a streak of monomania in you. It's what built up Personnel Incorporated. It's what got you to the moon and back. Hell, Whiteford, after this when we want pilots we'll just run your characteristics on the sorter and pick them out that way!"

Whiteford glared at him and for a moment Maxwell felt sorry. He had pushed a big man off a pedestal; he had punctured an ego.