wives there and certain duties to perform to insure the longevity of said children and wives. Now, with the speaking of a few words over a loudspeaker, the distance to Jupiter was suddenly an immense impossibility.
The captain of the Rocket Terra walked across the field slowly. He stopped several times to try and light a cigarette, but the night wind blew it out. He stood in the rocket shadow and looked up at Jupiter and swore quietly, again and again and finally threw down his cigarette and heeled it with his shoe.
Nibley walked up and stood beside the captain.
"Captain Kroll...."
Kroll turned. "Oh, hello, Grandpa—"
"Tough luck."
"Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's what you'd call it. Tough luck."
"You're going to take off anyway, Captain?"
"Sure," said Kroll quietly, looking at the sky. "Sure."
"How's the protective computator on board your ship?"
"Not so hot. Bad, in fact. It might conk out before we get half way through the asteroids."
"That's not good," said Nibley.
"It's lousy. I feel sick. I need a drink. I wish I was dead. I wish we'd never started this damned business of being damned pioneers. My family's up there!" He jerked his hand half way to Jupiter, violently. He settled down and tried to light another cigarette. No go. He threw it down after the other.
"Can't get through the asteroids without an asteroid computator to protect you, without that old radar set-up, captain," said Nibley, blinking wetly. He shuffled his small feet around in the red dust.
"We had an auxiliary computator on that repair ship coming from Earth," said Kroll, standing there. "And it had to crash."
"The Martians shoot it down, you think?"
"Sure. They don't like us going up to Jupiter. They got claims there, too. They'd like to see our colony die out. Best way to kill a colony is starve the colony. Starve the people. That means my family and lots of families. Then when you starve out the families the Martians can step in and take over, damn their filthy souls!"
* * * * *
Kroll fell silent Nibley shifted around. He walked around in front of Kroll so Kroll would see him. "Captain?"
Kroll didn't even look at him.
Nibley said, "Maybe I can help."
"You?"
"You heard about me, captain! You heard about me."
"What about you?"
"You can't wait a month for another auxiliary computator to come through from Earth. You got to push off tonight, to Jupiter, to get to your family and the colony and all that, captain, sure!" Nibley was hasty, he sort of fidgeted around, his voice high, and excited. "An' if your only computator conks out in the middle of the asteroids, well, you know what that means. Bang! No more ship! No more you. No more colony on Jupiter! Now, you know about me, my ability, you know, you heard."
Kroll was cool and quiet and far away. "I heard about you, old man. I heard lots. They say you got a funny brain and do things machines can't do. I don't know. I don't like the idea."
"But you got to like the idea, captain. I'm the only one can help you now!"
"I don't trust you. I heard about your drinking that time and wrecking that ship. I remember that."
"But I'm not drinking now. See. Smell my breath, go ahead! You see?"
Kroll stood there. He looked at the ship and he looked at the sky and then at Nibley. Finally he sighed. "Old man, I'm leaving right now. I might just as well take you along as leave you. You might do some good. What can I lose?"
"Not a damned thing, Captain, and you won't be sorry," cried Nibley.
"Step lively, then!"
They went to the Rocket, Kroll running, Nibley hobbling along after.
Trembling excitedly, Nibley stumbled into the Rocket. Everything had a hot mist over it. First time on a rocket in—ten years, by god. Good. Good to be aboard again. He smelled it. It smelled fine. It felt fine. Oh, it was very fine indeed. First time since that trouble he got into off the planet Venus ... he brushed that thought away. That was over and past.
He followed Kroll up through the ship to a small room in the prow.
Men ran up and down the rungs. Men who had families out there on Jupiter and were willing to go through the asteroids with a faulty radar set-up to reach those families and bring them the necessary cargo of machinery and food they needed to go on.
Out of a warm mist, old Nibley heard himself being introduced to a third man in the small room.
"Douglas, this is Nibley, our auxiliary computating machine."
"A poor time for joking, Captain."
"It's no joke," cried Nibley. "Here I am."
Douglas eyed Nibley with a very cold and exact eye. "No," he said. "No. I can't use him. I'm computant-mechanic."
"And I'm captain," said Kroll.
Douglas looked at Kroll. "We'll shove through to Jupiter with just our leaky set of radar-computators; that's the way it'll have to be. If we're wrecked halfway, well, we're wrecked. But I'll be damned if I go along with a decrepit son-of-a-witch-doctor!"
Nibley's eyes watered. He sucked in on himself. There was a pain round his heart and he was suddenly chilled.
Kroll started to speak, but a gong rattled and banged and a voice shouted, "Stations! Gunners up! Hammocks! Takeoff!"
"Takeoff!"
"Stay here!" Kroll snapped it at the old man. He leaped away and down the rungs of the ladder, leaving Nibley alone in the broad shadow of the bitter-eyed Douglas. Douglas looked him up and down in surly contempt. "So you know arcs, parabolas and orbits as good as my machines, do you?"
Nibley nodded, angry now that Kroll was gone:
"Machines," shrilled Nibley. "Can't do everything! They ain't got no intuition. Can't understand sabotage and hatreds and arguments. Or people. Machines're too damn slow!"
Douglas lidded his eyes. "You—you're faster?"
"I'm faster," said Nibley.
Douglas flicked his cigarette toward a wall-disposal slot.
"Predict that orbit!"
Nibley's eyes jerked. "Gonna miss it!"
The cigarette lay smouldering on the deck.
Douglas scowled at the cigarette.
Nibley made wheezy laughter. He minced to his shock-hammock, zipped into it. "Not bad, not bad, eh?"
The
