out!"

Harrison departed, his mind in a whirl but his soul strangely satisfied. Outside, First Mate Morgan glowered at him.

"How long d'you think it's going to take me to work through this list of names when guys like you squat in there for a week?" He grunted with ire, cupped hands around his mouth and bellowed, "Hope! Hope!"

No reply.

"Hope's been abandoned," informed Trooper Kinvig.

"That's really funny," sneered Morgan. "Look at me rolling all over the deck." He

cupped hands again and tried the next name. "Hyland! Hyland!"

No response.

Four more days, long, tedious, dragging ones. That made nine in all since the

battleship formed the rut in which it was still sitting.

There was trouble on board. Put off repeatedly, the third and fourth leave-quotas were becoming impatient, irritable.

"Morgan showed him the third roster again this morning. Same result. Grayder was forced to admit that this world cannot be defined as hostile and that we're legally entitled to run free."

"Well, why the blazes doesn't he keep to the book? The Space Committee could crucify him for ignoring it."

"Same excuse. He says he's not denying leave, he's merely postponing it. That's a crafty evasion, isn't it? He says he'll allow us to go out immediately the missing men come back."

"That might be never. Dam him, he's using them as a pretext to gyp me out of my liberty."

It was a powerful and legitimate complaint. Weeks, months, years of close confinement in a constantly vibrating metal bottle, no matter how big and comfortable, demands ultimate release. Men need fresh air, the good earth, the broad, clear-cut horizon, bulk-food, feminine companionship, new faces.

"He would ram home the stopper just when we've learned the best way to get around. Civilian clothes and behave like Gands, that's the secret. Even the first-quota boys are ready for another try."

"Grayder daren't take the risk. He's lost too many men already. One more quota cut in half and he won't have sufficient crew to hit the ship and take it home. We'd be stuck here for keeps. How'd you like that, freak?"

"I wouldn't grieve."

"He could train the bureaucrats to run the ship. It's high time those myopic bums did some honest work."

"That would take three years. Your training lasted three years, didn't it?"

Harrison came along holding a small envelope. Three of them picked on him at sight.

"Look who sauced His Loftiness and got confined to ship-same as us."

"That's what I like about it," observed Harrison. "Better to be fastened down for

something than for nothing."

"It won't be for much longer, you'll see! We're not going to hang around bellyaching forever. Mighty soon we'll do something."

"Such as what?"

"We're thinking it over," evaded the other, not liking to be taken up so quickly. He

noticed the envelope. "What's that you've got there?-the morning mail?"

"Exactly that," Harrison agreed.

"Have it your own way. I wasn't being nosey. I thought perhaps you'd got some

more written orders. You engineers usually pick up the paper-stuff first."

"It is mail," said Harrison.

"Don't be daft. Nobody receives letters in this part of the cosmos."

"I do."

"Well, how did you get that one?"

"Worrall brought it in from town a few minutes ago. A friend of mine gave him

dinner and let him bring the letter to wipe out the ob." He pulled a large ear and

smirked at them. "Influence, that's what you boys need."

Showing annoyance, one demanded, "What's Worrall doing off the boat? Is he privileged?"

"In a way. He's married and has three kids."

"So what?"

"The Ambassador figures that some people can be trusted more than others. They're not as likely to disappear, having too much to lose. So a few have been sorted out and sent into town to seek information about the missing ones."

"Have they found out anything?"

"Not much. Worrall says the quest is sheer waste of time. He traced a few of our men here and there, tried to persuade them to return but each said, 'I won't.' The Gands all said, 'Myob!' And that was that."

"There must be something in this Gand business," said one of them thoughtfully. "I'd give a lot to look into it for myself."

"That's what Grayder is afraid of."

"We'll give him more than that to worry about if he doesn't become reasonable pretty soon. Our patience is evaporating fast."

"Mutinous talk," Harrison reproved. He shook his head and displayed great sorrow. "You fellows shock me."

Continuing along the corridor, he reached his tiny cabin, fingered the envelope in pleased anticipation. The writing inside might be feminine. He hoped so. Tearing it open, he had a look. It wasn't.

Signed by Gleed, the missive said, "Never mind where I am or what I'm doing-this note might get into the wrong hands. All I'll tell you is that I expect to be fixed up top-notch providing I wait a decent interval to improve acquaintance. The rest of this directly concerns you."

"Huh?" He lay back on his bunk and held the letter nearer the light.

"I found a little fat guy running an empty shop. He does nothing but sit there waiting. Next, I learned that he has established possession by occupation of the premises. He's doing it on behalf of a factory that makes two-ball rollers, you know, those fan-driven motor-bikes. They want someone to operate the place as a local roller sales and service depot. The little fat man has had four applications to date but none from anyone with engineering ability and experience. The one who eventually gains this post will thereby plant a functional ob on the town, whatever that means. Anyway, this lovely business proposition is measured to your size. It's yours for the taking. Don't be freaky, freak. Jump in with me-the water's fine!"

"Zipping meteors!" said Harrison. His eyes moved on to the footnote at bottom.

"P.S. Seth will give you the address. P.P.S. This place where I am right now is your brunette's home town and she's thinking of coming back. She wants to live near her sister. So do I, man! The said sister is a honey!"

Stirring restlessly, he read it through a second time and a third, got up and paced around the cabin. There were sixteen hundred occupied worlds within the scope of the Terran Empire. He'd seen less than one-twentieth of them. No spaceman could live long enough to visit the lot. The service was divided into cosmic groups each dealing with its own relatively small section of the galaxy.

Except by hearsay-of which there was plenty and most of it highly colored-he would never know what heavens or pseudo-heavens existed in the other sections. In any case, it would be a blind gamble to pick on an unfamiliar world for landbound life solely on somebody else's recommendation. Not all think alike or have the same tastes. One man's meat may be another's poison.

The choice for retirement-which was the ugly name for beginning another, different but vigorous life-was high-priced on Terra or some more desirable planet in his own section. There was the Epsilon group, for instance, fourteen of them, all attractive providing you could suffer the gravity and endure lumbering around like a tired elephant. And there was Norton's Pink Paradise if, for the sake of getting by in peace, you could pander to Septimus Norton's rajah-complex and put up with his delusions of grandeur.

Out near the edge of the Milky Way was a matriarchy bossed by blonde Amazons, and a world of self-styled wizards, and a Pentecostal planet, and a globe where semi-sentient vegetables cultivated themselves in obedience to human masters. All these scattered across many light-years of space but accessible by Bliederdrive.

There were more than fifty known to him by personal experience, though only a tithe of the whole. All offered life and that human company which is the essence of life.

But this world of the Gands had something all the others lacked; it had the quality of being present, in the here and now. It was part of the existing environment from which he drew data on which to build his decisions. The others were not. They lost virtue by being absent and far away.

Quietly he made his way to the Blieder-room lockers, spent an hour cleaning and oiling his bicycle. Twilight was approaching when he returned. Taking a thin plaque from his pocket, he hung it on the wall, lay on his bunk and contemplated it.

F.-I.W.

The caller-system clicked, cleared its throat and announced, "All personnel will stand by for general instruction at eight hours tomorrow."

"I won't," said Harrison, and closed his eyes.

It was seven-twenty in the morning but nobody thought it early. There is little sense of earliness or lateness among space-roamers; to regain it they have to be landbound a month, watching a sun rise and set.

The chartroom was empty but there was considerable activity in the control-cabin. Grayder was there with Shelton There were more than fifty known to him by personal and Hame, also chief navigators Adamson, Werth and Yates, and, of course, His Excellency.

"I never thought the day would come," groused the latter, scowling at the star map over which the navigators pored. "Less than a couple of weeks and we retreat, admitting complete defeat."

"With all respect, Your Excellency, it doesn't look like that to me," said Grayder. "One can be defeated only by avowed enemies. These people are not enemies. That is where they've got us by the short hairs. They're not definable as hostile."

"That may be. I still say it's defeat. What else can you call it?"

"We've been outwitted by awkward relatives. There's nothing we can do about it. A man doesn't beat up his nephews and nieces merely because they refuse to speak to him."

"That is your viewpoint as a ship's commander. You have been confronted with a situation that requires you to return to base and report. It's routine. The entire space service is hidebound with routine." The Ambassador again eyed the star map as if he considered it offensive. "My own status is different. If I get out without so much as leaving a consul, it's diplomatic defeat, an insult to the dignity and prestige of Terra. I'm far from sure that I ought to go. It might be better if I stayed put even though circumstances would prevent me from functioning effectively and even though my presence would give these Gands endless opportunities for further insults."

"I wouldn't presume to advise you what to do for the best," Grayder said. "All I know is this: we carry troops and armaments for any protective or policing purposes that might be necessary here. But we cannot use them offensively against the Gands because they have provided no real excuse for doing so, also because we cannot influence a government that doesn't exist, and also because our full strength isn't enough to crush a population numbering many millions. We'd need an armada to make an impression upon this world. Even then we'd be fighting at the extreme limit of our reach and the reward of victory would be an area of destruction not worth having."

"Don't remind me. I have examined the problem from every angle until I'm sick of it."

Grayder shrugged. He was a man of action so long as it was action in deep space. Planetary shenanigans were not properly his responsibility. Now that the decisive moment was drawing near, when he would be back in his own attenuated element, he was becoming phlegmatic. To him, the Gand world was a visiting-place among a big number of them. And there were plenty more to come.

"Your Excellency, if you're in serious doubt about remaining here or returning with us, I'd appreciate it if you'd reach a decision fairly soon. First Mate Morgan has given me the tip that if I haven't approved the third leave-quota by ten o'clock the men intend to take matters into their own hands and walk out."

"That kind of conduct would get them into trouble of a really hot land, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know, really I just don't know," confessed Grayder.

"You mean they can actually defy you and get away with it?"

"Their idea is to turn my own quibbling against me. Since I've said repeatedly that I'm not officially forbidding leave, a walkout cannot be construed as mutiny. As you know, Your Excellency, I have been postponing leave. Therefore the men could plead before the Space Committee that I have ignored regulations. It is quite possible that the plea might succeed if the Space Committee happened to be in the mood to assert its authority."

"The Space Committee ought to be taken on a few long flights," opined the Ambassador. "They'd discover a lot of things they'll never learn behind a desk." He became mockingly hopeful. "How about us accidentally dropping our cargo of bureaucrats overboard on the way home? Such a misfortune should benefit the spaceways if not humanity in general."

"The suggestion strikes me as Gandish," said Grayder.

"The Gands wouldn't think of it. Their one and only technique is to say no, no, a thousand times no. That's all. But to judge by what has happened here it is more than enough." Morosely, the Ambassador pondered his predicament, decided, "I'm coming with you. It goes against the grain because it smacks of abject surrender. To stay would be a defiant gesture but I have to face the fact that it wouldn't serve any useful purpose at the present stage."

"Would you like us to return you to Hygeia?"

"No. The consul there is welcome to that crowd of nakes. Besides, I think I should give Terra the benefit of my personal report about this trip."

"Very well, Your Excellency." Going to a port, Grayder looked through it toward the town. "We have lost approximately four hundred men. Some of them have deserted for keeps. The others will return in their own good time and if I wait long enough. The latter have struck lucky, got their legs under somebody's table and are likely to extend their leave for as long as the fun lasts. They'll come back when it suits them, thinking they may as well be hung for sheep as for lambs. I have that sort of trouble on every long trip. It isn't so bad on the short ones." Moodily he surveyed a terrain bare of returning prodigals. "But we dare not wait for them. Not here."

"No, I reckon not."

"If we hang around much longer we're going to lose another two hundred. There won't be enough skilled men to take the boat up. The only way in which I can beat them to the draw is to give the order to prepare for take-off. They'll all come under flight regulations from that moment." He put on a pained smile. "That will give the space-lawyers among them plenty to think about."

"All right, make the order as soon as you like," approved the Ambassador. He joined the other at the port, studied the distant road, watched three Gand coaches whirl along it without stopping. He frowned, still upset by the type of mind which insists on pretending that a metal mountain is not there. Then his attention turned aside toward the tail-end. "What are those men doing outside?"