There was little chance that the suspendfreeze techniques or apparatus would go wrong. But that didn't mean they couldn't be sent wrong . . .

"You've got a pretty nasty job, haven't you, Mr. Joley?" purred the bland-faced scientist with an engaging smile.

"I'm not complaining," grunted the lanky lieutenant who sat across the desk from him and gazed at him curiously, as if wondering what this interview all about.

From beneath the deck came the surly growl of the rockets. Behind the desk, a viewing port displayed the glittering jewelry of the galaxy, hung in the black emptiness. They had been in space for several months.

After a few moments of waiting for the scientist to come to his purpose, the lieutenant glanced restlessly aside to stare through the hatchway into the adjoining compartment, where a gleaming maze of electro-surgical apparatus lurked in gloomy half-light.

"Is that stuff part of your suspendfreeze gadgetry?" he asked.

The physicist-surgeon stiffened slightly, then smiled pompously. " ' Stuff' —` gadgetry'," he echoed in the tones of a professor plucking bad words out of a freshman English theme.

"I didn't mean to belittle it, Doc!" Joley said hastily, remembering that the man was unreasonably touchy about his inventions.

"That's all right, Joley," said Doc Fraylin like a martyr. "I guess I should have known that people—all people—would be instinctively suspicious of it. They seem to feel it smacks of death—or of tampering with the sacred perhaps."

"I didn't mean to imply—"

"Never mind," Fraylin sighed. He glanced lovingly through the hatchway. "De Galbin invented the alpha drive and gave men the planets. De Galbin is now a multimillionaire. I invented the suspendfreeze and gave men the stars. And I am still—" He shrugged and smiled benignly, as if his presence as a technician aboard the ship were self-explanatory.

Lieutenant Joley said nothing to contradict. But he knew Fraylin was warping the truth a little. De Galbin had been a millionaire to begin with. He had hired dozens of engineers to help him perfect the drive; it had been De Galbin's money, but not altogether his brain-child. Fraylin, on the other hand, had been hired by the government to tackle a specific project: that of quick-freezing and thawing a human body without killing the subject.

"Ah well!" said Fraylin. "I suppose I can't complain. We all get bad breaks. Like you for instance, Mr. Joley."

"How do you mean?" the engineer asked stiffly.

"Why—you wanted to come on this trip as a colonist, I believe. Applied five years ago, didn't you? And here you are as an emergency-technician."

Eric Joley frowned. "I'll be permitted to join the colonists, when we get to Sigma Seven," he growled.

"I know, I know. If you're still alive. But you must remember: you're the ship's main fuse, Joley. If trouble comes while the ship sleeps, the emergency-circuits are set to thaw you out of your suspendfreeze unit, to handle the difficulty. And you can't put yourself back in. You'll be all alone, Joley —in a shipful of frozen corpses—maybe two hundred years before arrival-time."

Eric glared at the scientist irritably. Was he being sounded-out? What did Fraylin want?

"As I say: bad breaks," Fraylin continued. "It's not your fault the psychologists thought your personality fitted the task. They think your ethical standards are high enough so that you would endure a lifetime of solitude in space rather than awaken someone to be your companion—and share your fate. Therefore, you were condemned to the task because of your ethics."

Eric snorted angrily. " 'Ethics' wasn't the word they used. They said `emotional stability during prolonged deprivation of social contacts.' Furthermore, I volunteered for the job—when they wouldn't take me as a colonist. Did you call me in here to tell me what a sucker I am?"

Fraylin laughed. "Not at all. Roagan called me. Asked me to make a last-minute check on your attitude. I understand we're approaching final velocity, and that the jets will be shut off in about forty hours. We'll begin freezing colonists before then. When the jets are off, we freeze the crew. Then you and the other two, uh ... fuses. When everybody's tucked in, of course, my staff and I will get aboard the tug and go back to Earth. Then—you're all alone. Roagan naturally wants to make certain of everything before then."

"I see."

"You have any last minute qualms?"

Eric grinned. "Slight case of the jitters. I don't relish the idea of thawing out in mid-space."

Fraylin nodded sympathetically and glanced toward the pharmaceutical lockers. "If you're very nervous, I can give you something."

"No thanks."

The physicist-surgeon shrugged. "You'll observe your pledge then? To disturb none of the 'sleepers' in case you're awakened?" He paused. "Not even the girl who's listed with you on the genetic recommendations?"

"I haven't even seen her. I haven't looked at the bio-recs. I don't even know her name. I don't want to know."

Fraylin made a surprised mouth. "You're either remarkably self-restrained—or else you're remarkably feelingless."

"Neither. I don't want to be tempted."

"If you thawed yourself a companion, you wouldn't be punished, you know. You couldn't be."

"Don't put the idea in my mind," he growled.

Fraylin mused in silence for a moment. "I wonder what I would do—if I were in your place."

Eric watched the man's speculative eyes. He wondered, too.

"If you're brought to consciousness," Fraylin murmured, "you'll be in a position of complete control over more than two hundred sleepers. They'll be helpless in your hands. Joley."

"So?"

"You'll be unwatched, unjudged, a law unto yourself. A king aboard the ship."

"A hermit, you mean."

"If you wish it so."

"Still not convinced about those ethics, are you?" Eric snapped, brushing back the lock of red hair that fell on his forehead whenever anger threatened.

"I didn't say—"

"Listen, Fraylin! Are you through? I want to get out of here. I don't like inquisitions, I don't like your talk, and—as of now—I don't like you."

Fraylin glanced at him with lofty pity. "I'm not so sure you're as stable as they think, Joley."

"I didn't know you were a psych," he snapped.

"I'm not." Fraylin slid a filing folder onto his desk top and studied its contents briefly. "Psychologists are fallible," he muttered.

"You're not?"

The scientist ignored it. "Only child," he breathed, reading half-aloud. "No early-implanted need for social contact . . . mechanical extrovert, social introvert ... motivation derives from self-approval in task-accomplishment . . . endures prolonged solitude without distress—"

"Such inferences are guesswork," he grunted, looking up.

"I spent six months in solitary confinement to prove—"

Fraylin softened. "Nobody's satisfied, Joley—not with anything—not until the ship's safely in Sigma Seven. This whole deal is a gamble from beginning to end. Nearly three hundred lives are the stakes."

"For a man who's going back to Earth, Doc, you're worrying a lot." "Not worrying, just checking." "Are you through with me?"

"Yes—thank you. You may go."

Eric's exit was carefully jaunty, but when he reached a turning in the corridor, he paused to mop his forehead and to glance back to see if Fraylin was watching from the doorway. But the surgeon had remained at his desk. Eric caught the faint mutter of his voice speaking on the private interphone—to Commander Roagan, he guessed. He strode on toward the colonists' quarters, his face wearing a gloomier expression than he cared to show to the medics or to Skipper Roagan. It was not pleasant to think about the cold and utter aloneness of a lifetime spent in a silent ship of frigid corpses. A living death in a tomb of suspended life. Why did they keep reminding him of that possibility?

The call-system suddenly blared: Hear this, hear this. Mr. Jessel report to Space-Surgeon's office. Jessel to surgeon's office. This is all.

Eric made a wry mouth. Jessel was the second link in the emergency fusing. He would be awakened if the first link was already dead and if a second emergency threatened the ship. Eric felt better. At least he alone had not been singled out for Roagan's doubts.

He liked to wander about in that area of the ship assigned to the two hundred colonists. They were a tough but gregarious lot, and he enjoyed hovering on the outskirts of their laughter and companionship, even though he was less than welcome there. The presence of the gawky guardian of their big sleep sent the voices wavering into lower tones, and he sometimes felt their eyes watching his back with uneasy curiosity. The crew and the colonists both gave him the restless respect men reserve for those whose duty involves their own death. He saw their feelings toward him: they knew they owed him gratitude, yet friendly overtures were always damped by the thought what if I were in his boots?

And sometimes he detected a note of suspicion. What if his mind goes haywire? What if he wakes us all a couple of centuries too soon? What will the lonely prowler do while we are asleep and helpless? How could a man spend fifty years in complete aloneness—in a lifeless sepulcher. How will he deal with the temptation to awaken a comrade?

They were afraid of him. If I become his friend, he might thaw me out of loneliness.

Eric stopped to lounge in the doorway of the ship's dayroom where a game of poker progressed in an atmosphere of boredom—boredom, because the chips, whatever they represented were necessarily worthless. Money would mean nothing on the new world they sought. There would be no values save survival values. He listened to their talk for a time, and learned that the chips were acres of land, but that, too, was meaningless. Farming would have to be communal for a long time, until the colony grew.

They were all young, the two-hundred—young and hardy. A staff of government scientists had spent two years selecting them from many thousands of volunteers. Five additional years were given to their indoctrination, education, and conditioning—a year of which had left them stranded in the Amazon jungles for "survival' practice." They were physically healthy, mentally superior, and personally gregarious—with an aggressiveness that branded some of them as abnormal in a politer society, and with a high adaptability that sometimes expressed itself as complete abandonment of conventionality.

Eric, who had been selected for a different task, knew that he was not one of them.

One of the players—a muscular young man with a smugly handsome face—glanced up briefly from the game to see Eric standing in the entrance. He turned and murmured quietly to a sandy-haired girl beside him. Then he grinned at her mockingly. The girl reddened beneath her freckles and shook her head slightly. She stared fixedly at her cards. Eric recalled having seen them before—strolling about the ship together. Partners, he guessed, thrown together on the recommended mating lists.

The young man chuckled inaudibly and nudged her again. She responded by kicking him under the table. He turned to whisper to the others. Several pairs of eyes glanced up at Eric, but looked quickly back to the center of amusement: the sandy-haired girl. They began muttering to her and giggling. Her color deepened, and she hissed at them to be silent.

Eric studied her briefly. She was no beauty—slightly gawky and rawbone. She had a nice white grin that flickered on and off amid her embarrassed protests. Once she stole a glance at Eric, who was beginning to stiffen self-consciously.

"All right!" she snapped suddenly. "I'll let you have your fun."

She pushed back her chair and arose. Then he saw with consternation that she was coming toward him with a friendly if nervous smile, and her hand was extended in greeting. From the table, five teasing grins watched her derisively.

"Hello, Lieutenant Joley." Her voice was warm and throaty, and some of the flush was leaving her face. Frank blue eyes gazed at him evenly.

Eric murmured politely, took the hand coolly, and dropped it quickly. "A pleasure, Miss, but—"

"Waters—Angela Waters."

An instant of hushed expectancy hovered over the room, but Eric shook his head slowly. Snickers came from the table. He felt a dark inkling.

"Those jokers are having their fun at my expense, lieutenant. They're not laughing at you."

A chorus of guffaws came from the small audience. Eric frowned angrily over the girl's shoulder. He guessed the situation, then.

"He never heard of you, Ang!" somebody called in mockery.

Then the voice of the young man who had initiated the scene: "Mr. Joley, meet your wife."

The engineer looked helplessly at the girl and saw she was miserable; nor was she doing a good job of concealing it any longer. Her eyes fluttered longingly toward the exit, and she stood nervously hesitating between an urge to flee and the waning desire to "be a sport."

"Excuse me for a moment, Angela," he murmured with a quiet smile, then stepped around her and approached the table stiffly.

He dropped his knuckles lightly among the cards and stared expressionlessly down at the young originator of the incident.

"It wasn't funny."

The man's grin became defiant. "I thought it was." He extended his hand. "I'm Kenneth Thoren."

Eric ignored the hand. "Care to apologize to Miss Waters?"

An expectant hush had fallen over the group. A girl giggled. "Watch out, Ken. Don't make him mad. He's your guardian angel."

^"Yee-eah!" Thoren drawled, grinning at her.

"I'm telling you—watch out. You might wake up too soon."

"Care to apologize, Thoren?" Eric asked again, but his voice was drowned in a sudden chatter of conversation. Even Thoren was joining in it.

Their indifference to his anger stung him to cool rage. He tapped Thoren's shoulder. "Let's step aft, fellow. I know a good joke, too."

Thoren brushed his hand away contemptuously. "Don't bother me, boy scout. Go chase your wife."

Eric caught his collar to tug him upward, but Thoren had evidently expected it. His fist lashed up and skidded against the engineer's cheekbone. Although startled, Eric jerked hard at the collar, throwing him off balance as he came up. He threw a short chopping blow hard into Thoren's face, then sent him sprawling across the table with a left to the temple. Poker chips and cards sprayed across the room, and the spectators lunged for safety.

"Call the skipper," a voice barked.

Eric was on the fallen man before he could crawl away from the table. "If you want more in here, I'll kick your teeth out now. Otherwise you can get up, and we'll go aft."

Thoren rolled over and came to his hands and knees. He spat blood, then looked up with a red snarl. "It'll wait for Sigma Seven, fellow," he panted. "The skipper wouldn't like what I'm going to do to you."

"Any time, Thoren. Any time." Eric recovered his cap, glanced coolly at the others, and stalked out of the hushed room. The girl had gone.

But as he passed the first bend in the corridor he stumbled quickly aside to avoid colliding with her. She was leaning against the metal handrail, staring gloomily at the stars through a narrow viewing port. He muttered a hasty apology, tipped his cap, and started away briskly.

"Wait."

He came back slowly toward a pair of dismayed blue eyes.

"I'm sorry it happened," she said. "You were minding your own business. It was my fault." She found a handkerchief and dabbed at his cheekbone. It came away streaked with red.

"You heard the commotion?"

She nodded. "Is Ken all right?"

"For a while," he muttered ominously.

"You let him alone!"

Eric caught his breath at the sharpness of her tone. He smiled stiffly, nodded, and started away again.

"Wait."

"Yes?" He stopped to look back.

"I didn't mean . . . well . . . I meant, you'd do well to avoid trouble with him. He's got a nasty disposition."

"So have I."

"Well, I'm warning you. I know Ken Thoren too well." She stopped to watch his expression for an instant. Then she laughed nervously. "Oh no. Not that well, lieutenant."

He reapproached her slowly, wearing an easy "I am sorry it happened. I don't belong in this part of the ship, really. If I had stayed away—"

"I wouldn't have bothered you."

"Then I'm glad it did happen."

She acknowledged the gallantry with a wry smirk. "Well, since we're acquainted, shall we talk business?"

"I don't understand."

"The genetic recommendations—that's business, isn't it?"

He laughed nervously. "I suppose so. I hereby relinquish my claim—reluctantly and sorrowfully of course. Not that the listings give any claims. They're just suggestions. So I release you from the suggestion. I can't imagine what made them decide I was deserving of you anyway."

She smiled peculiarly for a moment. "You talk that way because you're shy, don't you?"

Eric bowed slightly. "Shall we announce the business session as closed?" She studied him speculatively.

"Maybe we'll leave it open a while."

"Ma'am?"

"You're quaint. Say—why did they pick you for that emergency job?"

"I have the exact form of unsanity that fits their needs."

"Which is?"

"I'm antisocial enough to live alone and like it."

"You don't sound like a hermit. You act reasonably human."

"Thanks. It's just a defense mechanism I have."

"What will you do if you're thawed —in space, I mean?"

Eric considered it. "Oh—dump all the male corpses overboard, I guess and wake all the ladies."

She laughed. "Business is definitely closed. I won't be a member of Joley's flying harem. Leave me in my icebox, please."

"O.K., but I'll come often to peek through the little window."

"Will I be dressed?"

Eric smiled at the ceiling and shook, his head slowly. "Naked as a hard-boiled egg—unshelled." He sighed.

"Stop wiggling your Adam's apple!"

He fingered his throat thoughtfully and gazed down at her with wry grin. "Thanks, ma'am," he murmured.

"For what?

"For not looking at me like I might turn out to be a time bomb instead of a protective device."

Her face went solemn and she looked again through the viewscreen. "I wonder who started that rumor," she breathed.

"What rumor?"

"You don't know?"

He shook his head slowly. She looked quickly up and down the corridor before she spoke.

"There's a story around that you three men, if you're called for an emergency, get your pick of the women. That you have the right to—"

Eric's face became a sudden thundercloud. He seized her arm and pulled her to the nearest interphone station.

"What are you doing?" she protested.

Eric buzzed the commander's office quickly. A gruff voice barked, "Roagan speaking."

"Just a minute, skipper. I've uncovered something I think you ought to hear." He turned to the girl. "Tell him about that rumor."

Surprised and sobered, she blurted it out haltingly. When she was half-finished, Roagan began bellowing.

"Whoa!" she cried. "I didn't start it."

"Who did then?"

"How should I know?"

"Then find out."

"I'm not your lackey" she snapped.

Roagan sputtered for a moment. "Joley, get to my cabin—or—no, never mind! I'll call a meeting of the colonists. We'll get this straight. No colonist is to be thawed before we hit Sigma Seven."

The station clicked off. The girl looked at Eric and arched her brows. "Pardon me—for starting a minor riot."

"Good thing you did. That story could start real trouble. Some of the couples have already married. The husbands might get a little nasty if they heard it."

"There is some bitter talk," she admitted.

The call system crackled for a moment, then blurted : Hear this, hear this. All non-crewmen colonists report to assembly room. Colonists to assembly. Hasty hasty. This is all.

"I'd better go," she muttered.

Eric nodded and stepped aside, but she hesitated, her pale eyes scrutinizing his face.

"Meet me later," she said.

His forehead wrinkled in surprise. "Why? The bio-reck business being closed, maybe we shouldn't—"

"Who said it was closed?"

She winked, simpered sourly, and sauntered away, leaving Eric uneasily gnawing the corner of his lip. The girl puzzled him. She seemed nice enough, but the pale eyes were full of strangeness. They quietly judged and measured him, but he caught the queer impression that the code by which they weighed was not the code currently popular among civilized humans.

" 'Also doth Satan bless, or damn,' " he breathed after her.

One thing seemed apparent — she approved him. But Eric somehow failed to feel flattered.

Although he had no duty-assignment while the ship was accelerating to final velocity, he wandered about through the control and reactor rooms, idly inspecting equipment, checking the computer circuits of the automatic course-correcting equipment, and otherwise trying to assure himself that no emergency would occur during the big sleep of the inertial flight across the galaxy. The circuits were a network of checks and balances, each capable, of detecting trouble in another, and of switching out the faulty elements to replace them with new circuit sections which were already set up. The equipment could repair itself—within limits. But the repair devices were without imagination, and if their judgment was wrong, they would continue switching new elements into the same recurrent trouble until the replacement-sections were exhausted. Then they could only call Joley from his big freeze, call him awake to build new ones.

His inspection revealed nothing but good efficient operation. But he failed to be reassured. Before leaving Earth, he had privately gathered data from intra-system space companies, gathered it and organized it into meaningful form. The repair records revealed that he could regard his premature awakening as sixty per cent probable, a conclusion which he discussed with Jessel, the second link in the emergency chain.

"Only one chance in ten of two emergencies occurring, Jess," he said as they sat in the observation blister, watching the Doppler effect tinge the stars to the fore with blue, and redden the ones to the aft. "Your odds are better than mine. Almost as good as those of finding an earthlike planet in Sigma Seven."

"You got it wrong, Eric," grunted the chubby Jessel as he sucked at a fat pipe. "Your data won't apply."

Eric glanced at him with a faint smile. Jessel was fond of contradicting, whatever the cause. "Why not, Jess?"

Jessel counted off the reasons on his stubby fingers. "One: A five-hundred-year flight has never been tried before. Two: This ship is no tried-and-true edition; new mechanical species are always full of bugs. Three: It's pushing overload right now, trying to get up to final velocity in a hurry—on account of the medics gotta go home; it's getting a good opportunity to develop electrical ulcers. Four: How do we know our course is clear? Meteors the automatics can avoid, but if we get sucked off course by the gravity of some black-dwarf star that they never foresaw . . . well . . . we can only call on you, Mr. Joley."

"Is that all?"

"If it's not enough, there's five: The interception factor."

"The what?"

Jesser grinned a wide expanse of pink gums and small teeth. "We'll range within a light-year or so of several stars before we get to the Sigma Seven cluster, Eric—stars, and maybe a planet or so. Can you anthropocentrically assume that there aren't any unearthly gentlemen living thereupon? Fellows capable of coming out to investigate us and holler, 'Stop in the name of the law!'?"

Eric scoffed. "I don't assume not, but it seems unlikely."

"O.K., go on in your naive faith—Man's the center of the universe, and all that. But don't wake me up in case a six-legged policeman comes banging on the air lock to spoil the fun."

"You're taking this pretty lightly, Jess."

"I can afford to. My odds are better than yours—as you say."

"You got it wrong, Jess," Eric mimicked. "There's the psychological factor."

"Huh?"

"Sure, I might lose my head and turn on your induction heater."

"That sort of practical joke could lead to a killing," said Jessel in a gloomy tone that suggested he meant it.

An aura of uneasiness seemed to be growing about the ship—affecting passengers and crew alike. Even after the meeting of the colonists, at which Roagan loudly contradicted the whispered rumor, Eric noticed the tenseness in men's glances as he wandered past them. And there was a general feeling of unrest that made itself apparent in surly faces, sharp tongues, and pointless arguments. The ship was restless, living in anxious dread of the big sleep drawing close upon them. By ship's-night, the corridors echoed with the footsteps of wandering insomniacs that drifted from screen to screen to stare across the emptiness, as if seeking an escape.

Suspendfreeze was temporary death. Would there be a resurrection? The time was growing shorter, and men's minds fled down the unseen bypaths of silent desperation, while they waited, forlornly waited.

"What if we do wake in Sigma Seven," came the gloomy whispers, "wake—and find no planets as the scientists predicted?"

And of course there was also: Let us make the most of what we yet may spend, my love, my dove—behold thou art fair. And doors closed softly along the corridors.

Once Eric was startled by the bedtime whisper of the call system. Hear this, hear this. Mr. Joley to Commander Roagan's quarters. Hasty hasty. This is all."

He stopped in surprise, then turned back. He was scarcely a dozen paces from Roagan's door. A few seconds later, he stood in the lighted entrance, watching the florid old commander finish pouring himself a stout drink. He looked around and held the bottle poised.

"Oh—you!" Roagan grunted. "You didn't need to run."

"I didn't."

With irritable carelessness, the old man sloshed whisky in a second glass. Eric watched him with mild amusement. He was less than drunk, but there was an abnormal casualness about his movements that could only have resulted from a generous dosage of bourbon and water.

"They say it helps in this suspend-freeze business," Roagan grunted gruffly as he handed Eric a glass.

"I thought it was snake bite," the engineer murmured.

The commander gave him a black look and settled heavily behind his desk to glower at the wall. "Doc Fraylin tells me you'll probably do," he growled.

"Glad to hear it, sir."

"But personally, I doubt it."

"What?"

"Nothing personal, y'understand."

"No, sir."

"What I mean is . . . well, blast it, Joley, there's something afoot! He waved a thick paw airily toward the ceiling. I can feel it—here." He tapped his chest significantly. "I've been in space for twenty years, and I know unrest when it's around. It gnaws at you—here inside—unrest does, even when you can't see it or hear it or smell its sneaking stench."

Whose unrest, Eric wondered Roagan's own? It was easy to see that the oldster was disturbed. Was he disturbed because of the general nervousness, or because of his own approaching sleep in suspendfreeze?

"Listen, Joley—something's up. I'm telling you! That bunch of psychopaths they recruited for colonists! Some of them are brewing up an underhanded batch of notions."

"How do you know? And what—?"

"I know, that's all! Watch them whisper around in sneaky little bunches. They look innocent when you pass, but look back—and they're watching you. I smell mutiny, son."

Eric started to scoff, but thought better of it. The old man was in a gloomy mood. He suddenly slapped his palm on the desk, then peered under it as if at an imaginary mosquito.

"Not violent mutiny," he said, "the sneaky kind, son. The kind where you wake up to hear some smilin' jackass tell you politely that plans are changed, and you might as well go back to sleep because your say-so don't amount to much any more. I feel it, Joley, I feel it."

Eric nodded politely. Roagan leaned forward to peer forlornly at the young engineer.

"Listen, Joley—know what I think? I think there's some of 'em would rather wake up in mid-space and spend a life carousing around the ship than they would fight it out to make a home on a new planet."

"That's a little farfetched, don't you think?"

The commander grunted to himself and stared into his glass.

"After all, they volunteered," Eric offered.

"Ever hear of changing your mind? That's why they were picked, Joley, because they're so all-fired adaptable they're positively poisonous. If they take it in their heads they'd rather stay on the ship, they'll try to swing it. 'Course—they wouldn't like it for long. They're like a bunch of miners on a spree. They take a notion, they do it, they get bored. But they won't keep a single notion very long. They get restless. Right now they're restless with the notion of suspendfreeze."

"Frontier spirit working the wrong way, huh?"

"Maybe. Listen, Joley—they won't dare pull anything while the medics are aboard. And before the medics leave, we'll all be human ice cubes. They must be planning to work through you, somehow. Has anybody approached you?"

Eric shook his head.

"Well, watch for it. I trust you Joley, and I trust Jessel, too. Crain is the only one I'd worry about, and he the third man in the three-shot fuse. Not much chance of him getting thawed, I guess." Roagan's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. " Fraylin Clair Crain is schizoid—to the point feeling persecuted. Can't understand why they picked him. Walking nightmare."

Eric finished his drink, put his hands on the arms of his chair, and leaned forward—as a hint.

" Now wait, Joley—I'm not finished. I almost forgot! As. soon as you wake up—if you wake up—you're to bring me around, too. That's an order. I'm too old to be any good on a new planet. But I want to see what goes on behind my back aboard ship. If you wake up, thaw me. That's an order."

Eric opened his mouth to protest, but closed it slowly. No use arguing with Roagan. But he had no intention of obeying the order. To wake a man in space was to condemn him to prison for life.

"You think I'm drinking too much."

"No, sir."

"You understood my order?"

"Yes, sir."

"You intend to obey it?"

"Of course."

"Good! That's all, Joley. See you before the big freeze."

Roagan was the victim of some wild imaginings, Eric thought as he left the commander's office. No sane man would want to be disturbed before the ship reached Sigma Seven. The journey would be timeless for the occupants of the freeze-lockers. They would sink into penathol anaesthesia before the present day-period was ended. A moment later, they would awake in a warm casket—with the aches of five centuries in their bones. The septenary star-system would be at hand. They would have no memory of the big-freeze.

"Roagan is nuts," he grunted as he made his way forward to the observation blister.

A shadow sat in one of the seats within the glass dome, and a cigarette glow traveled in a slow arc as he entered. The shadow had been sitting there for a long time apparently, for its eyes were adjusted to darkness and it recognized him.

"Lieutenant! 'Meet me later' to you means much later, doesn't it?" Her voice was a chiding purr.

"Oh, Miss Waters—"

"You don't sound happy to find me here."

"Well, I—"

"Come sit down."

Eric stepped inside the blister and found a seat across from her. By the sudden flare of her cigarette, he saw her pale eyes studying his shadow.

"There isn't much time left, is there?" she murmured.

"Until Sigma Seven?"

"Until the big freeze."

"Same thing."

"Is it, Mr. Joley?"

"Sure. Subjectively the freeze lasts no time at all."

"Or forever, maybe."

"What do you mean?"

"The freezer mechanisms. Liquid helium has funny habits, they say—like creeping through solid steel. Suppose a failure—"

Eric's face gathered a frown. "Are you an engineer, Miss Waters?"

"Oh no, but—"

"Then who put that thought in your head?"

She hesitated. "I don't know ... there's talk—"

"Talk! Who's starting all this talk?"

"Nobody starts it I guess. Just grows."

"Like mildew," he murmured gloomily.

"Tell me, Eric—why don't they let us stay alive on the ship—raise families, make a little world here. Sure we'd die in space, but twenty generations later, our descendants would get there. And they say the hydroponic tanks can—"

"They say! That kind of talk too, huh?"

"Well—why don't they let us?"

"Sociological reasons. The mores of a social group adjust gradually to the environment."

"I don't see—"

"Imagine the society that would develop aboard this ship after twenty generations. There's nothing to keep men busy. Nothing but their own urges and desires."

"Sounds heavenly," she chuckled.

"Utter dereliction, Miss Waters. The twentieth generation—if the group lasted that long—would be a degenerate batch of parasites. Our goal would be forgotten. They couldn't be pried loose from the ship; a Sigma Seven civilization would remain unborn. Probably by that time, Earth would be only a legend, a fiction out of the past. They'd be tied to the ship by a cultural umbilical cord."

"That's pure speculation; I don't believe it."

"You're right; it is speculation. Because it won't happen. Tomorrow we'll all be in the big freeze."

She said nothing. But there was a sardonic tone to the silence. It seemed to say: there are things you don't know about, Eric Joley. He felt vaguely disturbed. Was there an element of truth in Roagan's intuitive doubts?

"Eric?"

"What?"

"Suppose there's no Earthlike planet in Sigma Seven?"

"It's a ninety-seven per cent probable—according to the cosmologists."

"How do they know? They can't see planets that far."

"They can see three tiny red-dwarf stars in the vicinity—the cores left by supernovae explosions, over a billion years ago. They've calculated the amount of debris that would be gathered up by the stars in Sigma Seven. Enough explosion-dust to make about seventy-three Earth-size planets. And they applied the Gebrin-Tarnes 'criticalness' equations to get the chances for at least one Earthlike planet." She made a shivering sound in her throat. "And we're trusting our lives to Gebrin and Tarnes."

"Men have always left their security in the hands of a few geniuses—despite political oratory about equality. Remember your history? Nearly half the scientists at the first A-bomb test thought it would start a chain reaction in the Earth's crust. They gambled with destruction while polite society went on dancing at the Waldorf, completely unaware, while a large minority of expert opinion believed the world was about to become a small nova."

"Like now, huh? Like us, waiting for the big freeze?"

"Not at all," he growled irritably. I didn't mean it that way."

"Eric?"

"Yeah?"

She slipped out of her seat and crossed to him, laying her hands on his shoulders and leaning down to peer into his face. The loose locks of her hair dangled about his eyes, and lie heard the soft sound of her breathing.

"Suppose you're awakened."

"Suppose I am."'

"The loneliness would be terrible."

"There have been hermits before."

"You wouldn't need to be one."

"What do you mean?"

"Wake me."

He laughed mockingly: "So you could thaw out" he groped for a name—"Ken Thoren and start your little, colony of—"

Her hand lashed across his face like a whip, numbing his mouth. Sharp nails raked a path of pain across his cheek.

"So long, lieutenant!" she hissed. Then she was gone, and he sat blotting his face with a handkerchief, grumbling curses to himself. The swiftness of her violent reaction left him bewildered. It seemed to suggest —perhaps—that he had hit upon the truth. Had someone sent her to coax him? To dangle herself as bait?

At ship's dawn, Roagan called all deck officers to his cabin and armed them with forty-fives. Dark patches arced under his eyes, and his hands were nervous. Eric guessed that the commander had gone sleepless since their last meeting.

"An attempt was made to sabotage the suspendfreeze apparatus about two hours ago," he announced grimly. "Whoever did it was ignorant of the mechanism. Damage is already repaired. But watch out. Watch for trouble. Keep the weapons in plain sight, and don't turn your backs on any of the colonists."

The officers muttered surprise among themselves, but Roagan silenced them with a gesture.

"I've set guards on the equipment. You gentlemen are to stay alert and watch for suspicious gatherings. Break them up. When the medics are ready to begin, you'll lock the colonists in their own cabins and escort them to the surgical section one roomful at a time. Expect individual outbreaks of violence—and maybe some hysterical females. But let's try to keep it on a small scale. Don't waste any time arguing with them. There are strait jackets, ether inhalers, and handcuffs in the stock rooms. But don't bruise anybody. Bruises are bad business in suspendfreeze. That's all, gentlemen."

The officers filed out of the cabin, and as Eric sauntered_, aft along the catwalk, Jessel fell in step beside him.

"You see Crain take off?" the chubby engineer whispered.

"Uh-uh. When?"

"Just now—after the meeting. He stood by the door while Roagan was talking. Acted like he had a shirtful of fleas. When Roagan was through, he took off like his tail was on fire."

"Which way did he go?"

"Toward the colonist's quarters."

"Did Roagan give him a gun?"

"Yeah, I guess he pretty well had to."

"Let's go hang around the day-room, Jess."

"O.K. What do you think of Crain, Eric?"

"No comment."

"You know how the skipper feels?"

"Yeah—he's talked to you too, eh?"

"Mm-m-m! Seems to think Crain'd like to play Ezekiel to the dry bones."

"That's silly."

"Is it?"

"I hope."

They paused at the entrance to the dayroom. A large gathering of colonists was assembled there in quiet idleness. Too many of their faces were turned toward the doorway, watching the officers' entrance. The crowd had the look of an audience whose show had I been rudely interrupted. Conversations were just beginning here and I there. The faces looked away again.

"There's Crain," Jessel whispered. " Center of the room."

Eric glimpsed the black shock of hair and the gloomy eyes. He nodded. "Let's sit here by the door. Watch for trouble."

They sat quietly on the wall bench, one on each side of the entrance. The voices in the room spoke in low tones. Occasionally one of the men shouldered his way through the group, speaking the same short sentences to first one sub-gathering and then another. But there was little sense to be made of the low babble.

Once Eric heard a woman say, "Oh yes, that's true. Statistics show that you can expect nineteen per cent mortality in suspendfreeze: Of course, ours will probably be worse than that; it's such a long time. And that nineteen per cent doesn't count the amputees, as I understand it. Faulty thawing causes a lot of that."

"Hey lady!" Jessel grunted.

She looked around with lifted brows. "Where do you get off—spreading that hogwash?"

The woman's face hardened into a frigid smile. "Statistics aren't hogwash."

"Those statistics are a pack of lies."

She went white with cold fury, but before she could frame an answer, her companion glanced at the two engineers and burst out laughing. "Well look what's here! Our keepers are guarding us already. Guns and all."

Several people turned to stare. Eric and Jessel maintained an expressionless silence. The woman and her companion moved away, muttering to one another. But the room had seen and heard. The room was a step closer to open enmity.

"Notice Crain," Eric breathed. Nobody seems to mind him."

"Yeah. Who's starting all these rumors?"

"You're thinking Crain?"

"Don't know, Eric. Wish I did."

"Jess, there's no reason at all for this unrest. These people wouldn't be acting this way unless they were being prodded by somebody. They're nervous, naturally—but their nervousness wouldn't take this shape of overt nastiness unless—"

Eric never finished the speech. Within the span of a second came the pop of a rubber band, a hairpin darting toward the light globe, the crash of the bulb, and then a blanket of darkness. Reflexively Eric dived to the floor. Three pistol shots exploded deafeningly above him. He heard someone fall, then the weapon clattered on the floor.

From the back of the room, Crain's nasal voice cried, "My gun! Who stole my gun? "

Eric stood up. He had crawled to the center of the room, and he mingled with the milling, shouting herd in the dark^-ness. They were crowding out the doorway into the dimly lighted corridor. But then they began crowding back inside, and Roagan's voice was bellowing from beyond the door. Eric shouldered his way toward it. Flashlight beams stabbed about in the day-room and found the shattered bulb.

"All right!" Roagan roared. "Crowd back against the far wall! Back in the bus! Get moving. All crew personnel to the front! Hasty with it!" Doc Fraylin came in panting close behind him. '

One of the flashlights by the door was directed downward. As Eric tore himself free of the crowd, he saw what lay crumpled in the beam of light. It was Jessel, and the blood was tracked around his body like muddy footstep's across a porch floor. The gun—Crain's forty-five—lay beside the body. Fraylin arose and shook his head grimly.

Crain was already making his protestations of innocence to Roagan who listened in tight-lipped silence for a time, then turned to a lieutenant. "Lock Mr. Crain in his quarters," he snapped. "Put a guard on him."

"Am I under arrest?" whined the gloomy engineer.

"What gives you that idea?"

"You said—"

"So I did." Roagan addressed the lieutenant again. "Shoot him down if he tries anything."

"Yes, sir."

Crain pointed a trembling finger at Eric Joley. "Ask him! Ask him where I was."

Roagan paused. "Well, Joley? How did it happen."

Eric told him briefly, and added, "The shots came from about right here, skipper. Then Crain yelled that somebody had stolen his gun. His voice seemed to come from the back of the room. I don't think he fired the shot, sir."

"See?" Crain quavered. "You hear that?"

"But," Eric continued,^'` the one that knocked out the light wasn't the same one that fired the shots either."

Roagan grunted. "Who did you give that gun to, Crain?"

Crain's protest was almost a shriek. "Give? Give! It was stolen, skipper."

"Lock him up."

Crain was dragged away. A crewman replaced the broken ^'lamp, and the light came on. The colonists were crowded together at one end of the room. Eric looked at the wall against which he had been sitting. A slug had torn through the thin aluminum partition at about the level of his chest.

"They tried for you too," Roagan grunted absently. He was staring at the bloody footprints. Suddenly he glanced up at the colonists. "Anybody see who did it?"

No one answered him.

"All right, file out of here one at a time. Let us look at your shoes as you go. Then move straight to your cabins and 'stay there. Everyone's restricted to quarters."

When they were all gone, Eric stood beside the skipper, staring over his shoulder at the list of twenty-seven _names. Angela Waters' name was there, and so was Kenneth Thoren. Roagan had checked ten names, and Angela's was one of them—traces of blood on the shoe soles. Then Eric watched him scratch off the ten.

"That eliminates those," Roagan grunted. "The killer wouldn't have waited around for Jessel to bleed all over his shoes. Those ten evidently didn't know what they were skidding around in."

"Nice thinking, sir."

The commander glanced grimly down at the still form on the floor. "Not much chance of our finding the assassin, Joley. There's no time. The medics begin their work in an hour."

Eric looked slowly around the empty room, his face tight with anger. "I have an idea, sir. Can I work on it for that hour? I'll need a couple of guys to help me. And I'll need the dayroom here."

Roagan nodded slowly. "Go ahead, Joley. You're welcome to try. But I doubt—"

"I think I can narrow it down to three or four people, sir. And if I can, will you be willing to ship them back with the medics? At least we can get rid of the killer that way, whether we prove anything or not."

"I'll think about it." Roagan turned to direct two men with a stretcher in moving the body.

Eric left the dayroom and returned shortly with a pad of co-ordinate paper, a piece of chalk, and two enlisted guards. Then he quickly marked the floor into a grid of one-pace squares. He handed the list of names to the guards.

"Start bringing these people in here one at a time—including the scratched-out names. When I'm through with one, bring in the next. But don't let anybody get back to his cabin before I'm through with them all. Herd them in the assembly room."

The process began. As each colonist entered, Eric asked the same questions. "Where were you standing when the lights went out? Who was standing next to you? Point out the exact location."

Each colonist required less than a minute to answer and move on. And for each one, Eric marked a separate sheet of co-ordinate paper to correspond with the chalk-line grid on the floor; he labeled each ex with the corresponding name, and turned the sheets face down as the next colonist entered.

Angela came as number eleven, wearing an icy smile. "I was standing right here," she told him, "and Kenneth was here."

"Who else?" he asked, his face expressionless.

"I don't know. I was looking at Kenneth."

"That's all, thank you."

"Yes, lieutenant."

She pranced out arrogantly. Eric stared after her for a long moment before he called the next name on the list.

When he was finished, he ordered the guards to herd them back to their cabins. Then he went to Roagan's cabin with his twenty-seven sheets of graph paper. Roagan glanced at them briefly and called Doc Fraylin. He read off the twenty-seven names and asked the surgeon to hold them until last. Then he grinned at the engineer.

"I get the idea, Joley. Now let's see it it'll work."

Working together, they numbered the grid lines on each sheet, and transferred the results to a master sheet When they were finished, Roagan clucked his tongue thoughtfully.

"Well, skipper," Eric. grunted, "do we have five men by the name of Love well, and four by the name of Herrick? If we don't, then those two men can stand in a lot of very innocent positions at once. And look—they list each other too—in a place nobody else saw them."

"The killer and the light-bulb sniper. But not the brains behind it."

"The ones who alibied them might fall in that class."

"Then Crain isn't one of them," Eric announced. "He covered neither of them, and all the ones who listed his position are consistent, so maybe you're wrong about him, skipper."

"We'll see." He punched the intercom and called one of Lovewell's inconsistent friends—a young girl who was obviously frightened.

"Miss Malin," Roagan growled sternly. "I'm sending you back to Earth aboard the tug. You'll be tried as an accessory to murder."

She lost color and whimpered a protest, but the commander interrupted.

"Unless of course, you care to correct your statement about Lovewell." She opened her mouth, closed it, set her jaw firmly, and shook her head.

"Lock her up," Roagan told the crewman who brought her.

"Wait!"

"All right."

"He . . . he was standing next to me."

Eric glanced at the sheet and noted the position—the center of the room. "When he knocked out the light, eh?"

"I . . . well . . . I lent him a hairpin."

Roagan nodded to the guard. "Take her back to her cabin."

"Herrick's the gunman, then," Eric breathed when she was gone.

Roagan rocked thoughtfully for a moment. "Yeah—yeah. Step outside, Joley. In fact, go to Herrick's cabin, call him outside, and tell him to come back here with you. Don't let anybody else hear you tell him. I want him to think he's not observed when he comes here. Now let me have your gun."

Eric gave it to him with a grunt of surprise. Roagan unloaded it and gave it back. "Stand where he can make a grab for it," the skipper ordered. "I'll have a witness watching from the next room—one of the medics."

A few moments later, the engineer was knocking at the door of a cabin in the colonist's section. Kenneth Thoren opened it, and his face immediately froze in hard lines.

"Where's Herrick, Thoren?"

"Are you the ship's cop, Joley?"

"Where's Herrick?"

Thoren hesitated. "He's gone to the suspendfreeze lockers."

"You're a liar. Roagan told them to take him last."

The colonist's eyes narrowed to slits. "It's too bad the killer missed you, Joley. I'm telling you, Herrick went to the medics."

A more friendly face appeared behind Thoren's shoulder, the cabin's third occupant. "He traded places with me, sir. He used my name—James Willis. I was to use his when he was called. I figured it didn't matter. And he was in a hurry to get it over with."

Eric reported back to the skipper.

"That does it, Joley!" Roagan growled. "We can't thaw him out of that locker before the tug leaves, not without having him die on us in the process. I wouldn't mind, but the medics would put up a howl."

"How about loading the whole locker aboard the tug?"

"You know better than that!"

Eric nodded glumly. The tug had no helium equipment to sustain the deep freeze, nor the right sort of power units to supply the induction thawers. "Guess we're stuck with our killer."

"He'll get his in Sigma Seven." Roagan reached for the intercom and called the service crew. "Peters, get a welding torch and go to the suspend-freeze room. Find out what locker a guy by the name of Willis is stowed in. Weld the lid on tight. Take the leads off his thawer and chuck them out the air lock. Make sure the helium supply is on, then cut the handle off the valve. Paint a sign on the lid: 'Locker out of order. Thawing will result in occupant's death.' Don't tell anybody what you're doing or why—or who ordered it."

He winked at Eric as he clicked off the phone. "Only an emergency engineer would dare try to get him out."

"Next question—what are you going to do about Crain?"

"Mmmph!" Roagan tugged at his chin. "I'd better work on the others who alibied Herrick and Lovewell, see if I can't get something out of them. Something to tie in Crain."

"Who'll replace him, skipper? And who'll replace Jessel?"

Roagan's face was grave as he paced slowly about the office. "I don't know, Joley—I don't know. I'll talk to Fraylin about it. You can leave now, if you want to."

In returning to his quarters, Eric passed the surgical section and stopped to speak to a guard. "Any trouble so far?" he asked.

The man blew a rueful puff and waggled his head. "Got thirty of 'em in the freeze so far, sir. Six of 'em had to be dragged. Two had to be put out cold. Somebody's filled 'em full of wild ideas about their chances of waking up dead."

Eric nodded and turned to watch a pair of deck officers carry an unconscious girl in through the doorway. He caught the faint odor of ether as they passed, and there were red finger marks on her bare arm. "They don't look like the cream of Earth, do they sir?"

"I don't know, sergeant. Where's the dividing line between the frontier spirit and the urge to run away—between individualism and antisocial; tendencies—between cowardice and refusal to conform. Two aspects of the same thing, maybe."

The medics, with the help of the deck officers, were bringing in the colonists at five-minute intervals. Eric watched the production line through the doorway. The procedure consisted of several massive intravenous injections of various drugs, then a gin anaesthesia before the patient was wheeled out of his line-of-sight. Three or four minutes later, a rushing hiss told him that a locker was being flooded with liquid helium.

Soon he moved on, puzzling to him self about the motive for Jessel's murder—and for his own close escape. The vague whispered rumors surely wouldn't drive anyone to such desperate measures. It was undoubtedly part of a plot—a plot to install Crain in emergency-locker number one, perhaps. But why? And who was behind it? Crain himself?

Eric thought about the moody face of the third engineer and shook hi head slowly. Crain was somehow a normal, but his mind was not that, of a leader in conspiracy. He was probably a part of any plot that might exist, but Eric doubted that he had originated the idea of murdering Jessel. Probably, he thought, the trouble-center was some quiet-looking little colonist with paranoic tendencies—some unobtrusive person whom he had never met.

"Hello, lieutenant."

Eric looked up sharply to see Angela Waters watching him from a cabin doorway. She wore an amused smirk, but he could read nothing in the mask of her face. He nodded curtly and started to pass on.

"Oh, lieutenant—"

He whirled irritably, and snapped, "What?"

"I've heard another rumor."

The smirk was twitching a little, threatening to burst into mocking laughter, he thought.

"Don't you want to hear it?"

"Go on."

"The rumor says you're going to die pretty soon."

"Who invented it—you?"

"Oh no. The man who pulled the trigger in the dayroom. He invented t, lieutenant."

Eric grinned nastily. "Sorry to disappoint you. That fellow is already taken care of."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

She pursed her lips and lowered her head to peer sideways at him. She clucked her tongue and shook her head. "Alas, poor Yorick—or was it Herrick? The unfortunate fellow you welded in his icebox."

He caught his breath and came close to glower at her. "How did you know about that?" he hissed.

"The grapevine swings from tree to tree. Free rhymes with tree, doesn't it? Di dah dah dah the killer's free. Work it out yourself, lieutenant."

She turned her back on him and stepped into the cabin, but Eric stepped after her, caught her shoulder, and spun her around. "What are you talking about!" he barked.

The pale eyes were laughing at him. "Would you like to close the door, lieutenant?"

He glanced quickly about the cabin. It was empty.

"Where are the others?"

"All cuddly-cozy in their little iceboxes."

"Are you drunk?"

Her breath seemed to catch in her throat, but she denied it with a pfft. He closed the door and leaned against it.

"What's this about Herrick?"

She shook her head impatiently and sat on the narrow bunk. He watched her hand slide under the pillow—casually. It lingered there. He remembered that he had forgotten to reload his automatic before leaving Roagan's office.

"You're a nice guy, lieutenant—even if you are infuriatingly stupid."

"You mentioned a rumor."

"And I told you what it was."

"And that's all you want to say."

She looked at him for a long time with her head cocked aside. "Uh-uh! No—not all, I guess. You see—Herrick didn't fire those shots. He just stole the gun from Crain. That's why they alibied him. You see—he just gave it to somebody else, somebody nobody saw take it, somebody who wasn't supposed to shoot. But he shot—didn't he?"

Eric, playing along with her, remained silent.

"Nobody expected a killing. We just wanted the gun, just the gun, lieutenant."

"We!" he hissed, seizing upon the word. His hand snaked down, and came up with the forty-five.

Her face blanched slowly, and a muscle knotted in her throat.

"Get your hand out from under that pillow!"

Staring at him, she withdrew it slowly.

"Now let's see what's under it. Turn the pillow over."

"Sure you want to see?"

"Turn it!" he snapped.

A forlorn smile crossed her face. She pulled it away slowly, pushed the pillow on the floor. Eric's gun was suddenly dangling heavily at his thigh.

"Ugly little thing, isn't it, lieutenant?"

He swallowed a hard dry lump in his throat and stared at the gleaming little hypodermic needle. Then he slid the gun back in its holster.

"I . . ."

"Stop stuttering, lieutenant."

"Morphine?"

She only looked at him. And then he saw what it was about her eyes—not evil, just dereliction, emptiness. "You get it here—aboard ship?" She turned her eyes to stare fixedly at the doorway. "Out there in the corridor," she breathed, "somebody's watching, knows you're in here, knows I'm telling you. They'll have to kill me."

Eric moistened his lips nervously. "Who—?"

"Who? Who passes it around? Kenneth Thoren knows, maybe. He gets it for me, when I need it."

"Are many of the colonists—"

She laughed bitterly. "Why do you think they're so anxious to avoid the big freeze. The big freeze means we get to Sigma Seven. And Sigma Seven means—" She shuddered.

"No more of the stuff," he finished. She covered her face with her hands. "I wonder why you let me in on this?"

"I . . . I didn't want to see you killed, Joley."

"But you don't know who's behind it—or why?"

"No. Just the rumors. They say—it you and Jessel are dead, things will be all right."

"Things?"

She suffered for a moment. "We . . . we won't have to worry about Sigma Seven. We'll spend our lives he ship—awake."

"And somebody's slaves."

"It's sickening, isn't it?"

He shook his head sadly. "Frontier folk are just people that get bored with the status quo. Somebody offered you a frontier of sensation. Being tied down aboard ship for six months, you took it."

"What are you going to do, Joley?" He watched her misery for a moment. Why had she told him? "This," he grunted, crossed the room, lifted her chin, and kissed her. Her mouth tasted of cool indifference, but her eyes were pleased.

Then she picked up the hypodermic syringe and stared at it, turning it over slowly in her hands. He saw the terrible ambivalence in her face—craving, and loathing.

"Break it."

"I can't," she whispered.

^"So long, kid."

"Where to, lieutenant?"

"To kill a man, maybe."

"Don't look like that."

"Keep your door locked until they come for you." He went out into the corridor and looked around quickly. No one was in sight.

Around the bend, and a dozen paces. A closed door. Silence beyond it. Kenneth Thoren's cabin. He let his hand rest on the knob, then twisted. It was unlocked.

Thoren swung around slowly to blink at the intruder leaning in the entrance. His face twisted into an arrogant snarl, but before he spoke, the emergency engineer stepped inside and bolted the door behind him. Their eyes looked in silent hate.

"Get out!"

Eric grinned and crossed slowly toward him. Thoren swung reflexively into a defensive stance, but his face was bewildered.

"What do you mean—!"

Eric's boot crashed upward. Thoren shrieked as it thudded home, but as he doubled over, the engineer's fist exploded against his head, bowling him against the wall. He sat down hard. Eric kicked him in the stomach, and it robbed him of the wind to shriek.

"Where do you get the dope, Thoren?" he asked casually, and without waiting for an answer he brought a boot heel crunching down on Thoren's kneecap.

"Who gives it to you, Thoren?" This time the boot caught him in the mouth. Thoren spat two teeth, and a piece of his lip dangled loose. The colonist was whimpering weakly.

"I don't particularly care if you tell me or not. I like to do this." He caught a limp foot in both hands and wrenched an ankle out of joint with an expert twist.

"Don't tell me, Thoren. Be brave."

"No! I'll tell—"

Eric drew back suddenly, seeing Thoren was about to faint. "All right, spill it. But don't bore me, fellow."

"I don't know where it comes from . . . no, it's the truth! It's delivered through the dayroom. Package left on the bench."

Eric stared at him for a moment. He was too frightened to be lying. "What do you give in return?"

"Nothing—just nothing."

"Anything else in the packages? Notes? Instructions? Orders?"

Thoren paused to wipe blood from his chin. "No. Not orders. Notes sometimes. News about—what's going on."

"The rumors, huh?"

He nodded weakly.

"Where does Crain fit in?"

". . . I . . . he's on the stuff, too."

"Where does he fit?"

"He's supposed to wake us—if he gets the chance."

Eric caught the colonist's arm, lifted him to his feet, and half-carried him to his bunk. "You don't have to worry, Thoren. You're going back to Earth aboard the tug."

He left the man lying there and started to see Roagan. But he hung back. Could he even be sure of Roagan? The man behind it was someone who had access to the medic's supplies —somebody high up. Yet it couldn't be a medic. The medics were going back. And there was only one possible motive for the insidious plot; some degenerate maniac wanted the ship for his private little paradise. A yacht cruise through eternity, a private kingdom, a madman's concept of heaven. Somehow it sounded like a tired and embittered old man. Roagan?

Roagan had nothing to look forward to on a new planet. The ship had been his kingdom for half a dozen years. He stood only to lose it, lose his authority, become a doddering liability to the group upon a frontier world. Eric paused. He could almost hear the oldster's reasoning: "I don't want much. Just a few years retirement aboard my own boat—and a little pleasure toward the end. It won't hurt anything. I won't bother many of the lockers—just my little group, heh heh!"

Roagan? Maybe. But it could be otherwise.

Time was running out. Most of the colonists were in their lockers, and the ship had grown quiet, save for the steady one-gravity thrust of the rockets and the glum clump of crewmen's boots along the corridors. Angela had gone to her temporary tomb. Ken Thoren was transferred to the tug—when the medics saw his bruises and disqualified him. Soon the crew would be shutting down the jets—and the quasi-gravity caused by their acceleration would cease.

Hear this, hear this, croaked the call system. M. Joley report to Commander Roagan's cabin. Joley to command cabin. Hasty hasty. This is all.

Fraylin and Roagan were waiting for him when he entered. Their eyes swept over him coolly while Roagan tapped his pencil with what seemed to be restrained irritation.

"I've got news for you, Joley," the commander grunted.

"Yes, sir?"

"You're being moved to the third position."

"But why?" he gasped.

"After the way you worked that Thoren-boy over, I'm not sure you're to be trusted. Neither is Doc Fraylin here."

Fraylin coughed in embarrassment and tried to smile. "Oh, it's not that incident, so much," he murmured.– " You see, Joley—I've never agreed with the psych's idea of what personality-type is best for the emergency job. True, you can endure solitude. And in a nonsocial emergency-situation, you hold up well. But you're basically unstable, schizoid type—what they used to call 'moral insanity.' No offense, personally, Joley —but take the Thoren incident. Would a stable man react that brutally to an argument over a girl — Miss Waters, I believe her name is? "

Eric glowered in silence. So that had been Thoren's story! And in Roagan's presence, he dared not contradict it.

"Crain is to be number one, I suppose?"

Roagan arched his brows and purred, "Suppose again. Crain is going back to Earth—as an accessory in Jessel's murder."

"Who then?"

"Me, Joley."

Naturally, Eric thought. "And who is second?"

Roagan glanced at Fraylin and frowned. "We haven't decided yet. But it shouldn't matter to you, Joley."

"Is that all, sir?"

"Yes, that's all. Report to Fraylin's staff as soon as the rockets are shut off."

Lost in thought, he wandered up to the observation blister and sat smoking in the starry darkness. One thing seemed certain: the third locker was a death trap.

But how? The medics would have to see that its occupant was properly installed in the suspendfreeze, but—his mind wavered—the thawers, of course! They could be easily sabotaged. When the awakening came, the temperature of the cabinet should be allowed to increase slowly to a critical point, and remain there for a time. Then, through a massive coil of copper tubing that encircled the body, came a quick burst of high-frequency current. This r.f. surge induced eddy-currents within the frozen flesh, quickly thawing and heating it to body temperature. Its frequency was such that the current-surge would not rupture the cell walls, but otherwise the process was similiar to electronic cookery. The timing mechanisms could easily be thrown off enough to be fatal.

Suddenly the sound of labored breathing was in the compartment with him. A shadow moved in the doorway, and he heard the creak of boots. A chill crept along his nape.

"Who is it?" he asked stiffly.

"I . . . I . . . I, Crain," came the nasal reply.

Eric hesitated. "So he's giving you the run of the ship now, eh?"

"The guard—he's gone."

"To the lockers?"

" I guess. Uh…" He sat down heavily. His voice was dazed, laden with dull pain. "Wonder ... wonder where that colonist is?" He seemed to be musing to himself.

"Who? Thoren? To the lockers. You need what he has, don't you?"

"I . . . I need—" The voice halted, became a note higher in tone. "Oh . . . you . . . Joley! Joley, you told him I didn't do it, you told him."

"Told him you didn't shoot Jessel? Yeah. But I didn't say you didn't give your gun away."

The half-drugged man emitted a low moan. "I didn't! They stole it. They grabbed it when the light failed."

"I believe you. But you were going to do some thawing after the big freeze, weren't you?"

"I've got to! I've got to!"

Eric paused, then said coldly, "You haven't heard, then. Roagan's sending you back to Earth. Accessory to murder. They'll execute you."

There was a long silence, then a whimper. "You're lying, Joley!"

"No, I'm not. Roagan just told me."

Another silence, then an ear-piercing shriek. "I'll kill him!

"Hush! He'll hear you. Sound carries in this tomb!"

"Tomb . . . tomb . . . it is a tomb!" The melancholy Crain was suddenly sobbing in his hands. "Only the dead will dance, Joley. The already dead."

"At whose command, Crain?"

There was a hollow chuckle. "The dead don't know their puppet master."

"Roagan."

"No!"

"Yes."

Crain fell into confused silence. His mind seemed close to the breaking point.

"Maybe I can help you, Crain," Eric said thoughtfully. "Maybe I can keep them from taking you back to Earth."

"Earth? How? But I don't want Sigma Seven." His shudder was audible.

"Listen, Crain. They're after me, too. They'll see you hanged, and they'll kill me in my locker. But we can work it out, maybe—if you'll buck up."

"It doesn't matter. All I want is . . . is . . . peace—"

In a syringe, Eric thought, but he said, "If we work it out, you'll be left aboard the ship. With plenty of . . . of whatever you need, all by yourself."

"How?" There was a sudden note of interest in the sharply barked word.

Before Eric could explain, there was a sudden lurch, and a slight faltering of the steady growl of the rockets.

Hear this, hear this. Prepare for degravitation. We have attained final velocity. Buckle down, buckle down. Reactors going off. This is all.

Eric hitched a safety belt across his lap and saw that Crain did likewise. Minutes later, a sharp thwup shivered through the hull. Then all was silence, and they floated upward in their seats. The ship would coast unpowered now—lunging on toward Sigma Seven.

Then the turning rockets thrummed to life, and slowly the ship began to spin about its long axis, like a bullet rifling in space. As the centrifugal force slowly increased, Eric listed sideways in his seat. He unfastened his belt and slid down to sit upon what had been the wall. Then he helped the moaning Crain to do likewise.

The turning rockets sputtered off, leaving the ship spinning inertially at a few r.p.m. The outer hull was now the floor.

"Come on," Eric hissed. "If I know Roagan, he won't leave his cabin till it's his freeze-time. He never cares for this centrifigravity. Weak stomach."

Crain made a sick sound in his throat, but he came like a lamb. Where the corridor was wide enough, they walked along the wall, and when it narrowed they crawled. They met no one. The crewmen who were not needed in the reactor rooms were already with the medics.

"Where we going?" Crain panted.

"Here." Eric stopped in the hallway and reached up to open a door in the ceiling.

"But that's Jessel's cabin!" Crain gasped.

"Right. Cup your hands for a foothold. I'm going up."

The engineer obeyed, staggering weakly as he bore Eric's weight for a moment.

"Come on, now I'll help you up, Crain."

"I . . . I . . . is his body in there?"

"Hurry up! Before someone comes."

He closed the door softly again beneath them, then struck a match in the darkness. An aluminum casket was bolted to the wall which had been the floor before the gravity-switch. He looked up at it sorrowfully for a few seconds.

"Joley . . . what—?"

"Hush! Help me get it open."

"No!"

"Well, strike matches for me, then."

The gloomy Crain sat on the floor while Eric worked quietly at the fastenings. Minutes later the cool, rigid body of Lieutenant Jessel slipped heavily into his arms. He lowered it gently to the floor.

"Joley, I'm sick!"

"I'll get you something," Eric grunted, almost happily. He fumbled in the darkness until he found Jessel's dufflebag, then browsed through it until his hand met a small bottle, a bottle he had known would be there.

He shook several capsules onto the flat of his palm and gave them to Crain. "Take them."

"What are they?"

"Some stuff Jessel used to settle his nerves," he lied.

Crain made dry swallowing sounds in the darkness. Four sleeping capsules, Eric thought, should keep him down for a while—if coupled with a slight concussion.

Calmly he grasped a handful of Crain's greasy shock of hair and clubbed him hard with a fist to the temple. After a brief moan, he sank quietly to the floor.

Eric found Jessel's paper and scrawled a note by matchlight. He pinned it to Crain's chest, then transferred the wrapping-sheet from the dead man to the unconscious one. Crain's scrawny body was easily hoisted and secured in the unlined sheet-metal box that served for a casket. He hoped the seams around the lid were loose enough to keep the man from suffocating.

Footsteps made him pause, freezing into breathless silence. Were they coming to load the body aboard the tug now? The trampling of half a dozen men passed beneath him. And moved on. The reactor-room crew, on their way to the medics. He breathed again.

The time was right. The after section of the ship should be empty now. After stealing a glance down into the corridor, he lowered Jessel's body through the horizontal door, then came down behind it.

Minutes later, he stumbled into the dark reactor room where the plates were still making clucking noises as they cooled. He put the body down and felt about the emergency control panels with his hands, making certain that the rocket tubes had been left choked off tight. Then he cracked the hatch to one of the field-coil chambers to let the tube belch itself full of air from within the room. When it finished hissing, he opened it all the way and loaded the corpse inside.

"So long, fellow," he muttered, feeling like a ghoul.

He closed the hatch again tightly and opened the choked tube. The gruff bark of the released air pressure thudded through the ship. The body had been puffed out of the tube as if by a low-pressure pneumatic cannon. But Eric didn't stop to look. The others would come to investigate the sound. He choked off the tube again and fled.

Footsteps were approaching as he ducked inside his own quarters and closed the door beneath him. A moment later, a heavy fist knocked, and Roagan's voice called, "Joley, you in there?"

He grunted a sleepy affirmative. Roagan moved on. A few minutes later, the call system came to life.

Hear this urgent. Answer roll call by intercom. Man in space, Man in space. Answer roll call. Ackerman ... Avery . . . Bates

"Ho . .. here . . . h'yo," came the disinterested answers, save for an occasional, "He's in an icebox."

Crain . . . Crain .. . William Quinby Crain . .. Anybody seen him? Eric cleared his throat and answered, "This is Joley. I saw him in the obs-blister half an hour ago."

The roll call ceased. Footsteps came again, and Roagan growled, "Open up, Joley."

Eric slid down into the corridor, rather than have himself alone with the commander in the cabin. The oldster was staring at him suspiciously. "You saw him?"

Eric let himself look nervous. He nodded and shuffled his feet.

"Don't tell me," Roagan snapped savagely. "Let me guess. You told him he was going back to Earth for trial."

"I . . . I figured he knew, skipper. I'm sorry."

"You idiot! I let him think I believed his story—so I wouldn't need to guard him! He burped himself out the jets!"

"Sorry—"

"Well—it saved a court-martial, I guess," Roagan growled. He stalked quickly away.

Eric followed at a distance and saw that he was going to his cabin, evidently to call the tug in for grappling. Within the hour the job would be finished, and the medics ready to leave the ship for their return to Earth. He made his way to Fraylin's office. The last of the reactor room crew was filing inside.

Fraylin saw him and came to the door. "I was about to call you, Joley. We'll be ready for you soon. You can strip to your shorts, if you like."

"Yeah, well first—I'd like to take a last look at my locker. If you don't mind."

"Why "—Fraylin's thin mouth fluttered with amusement—"not at all."

He went into the cold room, a long narrow corridor whose floor was now the faces of the freeze lockers—like graves with heavily insulated lids. The workings of the multi-stage refrigeration made a rushing sound beneath his feet. Once he stopped to stare down at a small square-panel in the floor. The nameplate said, "Angela Waters 184."

Tomorrow is Sigma Seven, he promised her, then moved hurriedly on.

The emergency lockers were in a small room at the far end of the main section, and the alarm mechanisms—triggered by the ship's trouble circuits —were located on a small panel board in the center of the floor. There was no time for a detailed inspection. He quickly knelt and switched the multi-contact plugs that connected the thawing coils to their timers. He interchanged the leads to lockers one and three, so that the thawing timer meant for unit one controlled his own locker. Then he hurried back across the faces of the temporarily dead.

"That was quick," Fraylin observed as he re-entered the office. "Everything suit you?"

"It's O.K., I guess."

The physicist surgeon peered at him with quiet amusement. "I invented those lockers, Joley. If there were something wrong with them, I'd know it."

He moved away. Eric wondered if he heard echoes of irritation in the scientist's voice. He remembered the man's sense of being wronged, wronged because his work in suspendfreeze hadn't brought him the rewards he felt that he deserved.

"Strip please, Mr. Joley," said a medic. "We're ready for you."

Needles began jabbing his arms, exploring, gouging in search of veins.

"This will make you a little drunk, Mr. Joley."

"Here's the anticrystalis. Protects the cell walls. Keeps ice crystals from—"

"Try to hold still, sir. This one goes in the abdominal wall. Oops!"

"Help him, Mike—that alk-shot hit him."

Eric staggered weakly, and the room began to blur.

"Onto the anaesthetic table now," somebody called.

Another needle began exploring in the hollow of his arm-

"Oops!"

Cold! Nasty, shivery, chilly cold. Not the kind he had expected at all. In fact, he had not expected to feel it. Sick and weak, he lay half awake, feeling the thick copper coil about him. Darkness and chilly moisture. Had he been thawed?

Impossible! They said it hurt. They said it was like a jolt of hell, that it crippled a man for days. He felt uncrippled. There was only nausea and a headache. His mind cleared slowly.

If the automatics had thawed him, they would have also hauled him out of the locker, laid him on a stretcher, shot him full of adrenalin, and loaded him into the iron lung for a session of enforced respiration. But they weren't doing anything.

He came to a conclusion: I haven't been frozen at all. Only anaesthetized. Hours, not years had passed. He wriggled upward, got his head against the door, and shoved. It budged a little, then flopped open. The blackness was only slightly lessened. The lights were off throughout the ship. The gravity was reduced to nearly nothing. He pushed himself out of the locker, then shuffled about with a bare foot until he found the lid of locker #1. He could feel the purr of refrigerant coursing aside. Ruefully he grinned.

"So, Roagan, you planned not to go to sleep at all, eh?" he muttered. "Well now let's see how you planned to wake me up."

He felt about on the panel until he found the thawer controls for unit one. He tripped them, the purring stopped. There came a draining sound. It would take a little time, he guessed, for Roagan's trap to kill himself.

So he hurried in search of some clothing, then went to the control section, started a power unit, and sent out a radio call to the tug. It failed to answer. But it could scarcely be more than an hour away. He tried again—with the same results.

They obviously weren't listening. And why should they listen for calls from a ship of the dead? He began praying for the life of a gloomy morphine-addict by the name of Crain. He even went to make certain that Jessel's casket had been loaded aboard the tug. It had.

"Wake up and start kicking the lid off!" he growled at a mental image of the sheet-metal casket.

Suppose they had it locked in a soundproof room? Or back by the reactors where the din would drown his nasal screams? Suppose they took it back and decked it with lilies and buried it in Arlington Cemetery before the "corpse" got a word in edgewise?

And then, on the other hand, he began to regret the little note he had written to accompany the melancholy Crain. "Gentlemen," it said, "you can have this one. There are nice live ones in the lockers."

The note was calculated to bring them back on screaming jets after he had gained control of the situation, after he had made certain that everyone who possibly might be involved was either bedded down or well in hand. But then, the tug's skipper might not see it that way. He might, in fact, take a dim view of Joley's controlling the situation—and even go so far as to clap him in irons and haul him back to Earth.

Queer noises were coming from the locker room. Roagan's thawers were at work. Eric shuddered and stayed away, not wanting to see the charred husk of a man that the automatics would haul out of the tomb. But electronic cookery never charred; it only over-stewed.

He paced restlessly about the ship, cutting on all the lights, waiting for the tug to come back. Finally the clanking sounds stopped, and he heard the wheezing blurp of the iron lung at work.

Grimly he went to take Roagan out of it, lest the lung tear the over-cooked remains to shreds and foul the bellows mechanism. He closed his eyes and cut on the lights.

But the remains were moaning softly, and its eyes were glaring at him balefully. His face was beet-red, but it was a normal thawing job.

"Roagan!"

"Joley!" he whispered. "So it was you behind this deal!"

"Don't give me that!" Eric barked. "If I hadn't switched leads with you, I'd be lying there, and you'd be standing over me."

"You what?" he gasped. "When?"

"I switched the control leads on lockers one and three—just before they put me under."

Roagan tried to twist his head a little. He yelped and screwed his face. "Who's in locker two?" he whimpered.

Joley gaped. "You tell me! You picked him."

"No," he whispered. "I picked Peters, but Peters got sick. I was still looking for somebody when—"

"When what?"

Roagan managed a pouting frown. "When I passed out cold in my cabin."

"Drinking?"

"Not that much."

"Anybody with you to prove it?"

"Fraylin."

"Where'd you wake up?"

"In here."

"And you didn't assign anybody to locker two?"

"No, I didn't want to. I figured the fellow who's behind this mess would try to get it. That's why I switched the control leads to units one and two."

"What? When?"

"Last sleeping period."

Eric sat down hard on the floor. There was a long silence. "First—you switch one and two—then I switch one and three—"

"Shells-and-pea game," Roagan breathed. "The pea's in two."

Eric stared at the insulated hatch. "I gotta hunch I know him."

"So do I."

"He was pretty bitter about not getting the kind of credit he wanted for inventing these units."

"Mmm—"

"Let's see, if we hadn't switched leads, he'd be where I am. And you'd be where he is. And I'd be where you are. Right?"

"I'm not thinking that good yet."

Eric's hand snaked toward the thawing switch. "Let's make sure it's Fraylin," he muttered.

"I wouldn't, Joley! It might 'not be nice."

"Uh." He pulled the hand back. "Well, the tug'll be here in a little while, surely."

"Tug? You contacted them?"

Eric hastily explained the nature of the contact. "I think," he grumbled darkly, "that I'll crawl back in my locker while you explain my innocence."

Roagan chuckled evilly.

The alarm bell suddenly clamored through the ship, hammering its din on cold brass. Eric darted to his feet, then relaxed slowly. "The tug. I forgot. The scanners are set to turn in an emergency at the approach of any non-uniformly moving body."

Then there came sounds of relays clucking beneath his feet. He looked down sharply. "The emergency system is waking him up!"

"Get me out of here!" Roagan groaned.

"It'll release you when you've had enough."

Eric went to watch for the tug. It was not yet in sight, but its blip was on the screen. He put in a call on the radio, and tried to explain the situation. Their answer was noncommittal, but they ordered him to prepare for grappling.

When he went back to the freezer compartment, Roagan had fainted. The second locker was hissing steam and bubbling up around the lid. Eric held his nose while he shut off the thawers. Fraylin was thoroughly cooked.

He hauled Roagan out of the lung as soon as the diaphragm slid back to release him. The commander was still too weak to walk.

"I'm going back to Earth, Joley," he muttered. "I've had enough. Can't take another trip through that gadget."

Eric helped him back to his cabin, and they sat down to wait. "I thought it was you, skipper. I'm sorry."

"Mmmph!"

"I should have known—you wouldn't have to borrow Crain's gun to kill Jessel. But Fraylin had no reason to be armed. You hadn't issued him a gun."

"I still don't see how he could have killed Jessel. He wasn't there."

"No, he was in the corridor. Herrick stole Crain's gun and passed it outside, not knowing Fraylin meant to use it, right after Lovewell popped out the light. Fraylin immediately stepped inside and blasted at us in the darkness. Then during the confusion, he walked to the end of the corridor, and came back running. As soon as he was able, he got Herrick to switch places with the other colonist, and got him in a freeze-locker out of the way."

"If you thought it was me," Roagan grunted, "I'm surprised you didn't go to Fraylin for help."

"I didn't think Fraylin would believe me. And then, I thought you were probably getting the morphine through one of the medics. I didn't want to warn him,' in case Fraylin wouldn't believe me."

"One other thing—why did you pitch Jessel's body overboard?"

"Because even if the tug's commander wouldn't come back on the strength of the note, he'd have to come back to get the corpse. They couldn't try Crain without a body."

Roagan stared at him with tired eyes. "Joley, I'm going to do one thing before I leave this ship. I'm going to see that you're stashed away in one of the colonist's lockers, and that the door is bolted on tight. I don't want you prowling again for five hundred years. I'll get three of the tug crew for the lockers. They've been itching to go."

Eric grinned. He wandered back to the cold room and sat down beside Angela's locker. He tore out the timing mechanisms from the thawer and went to lock them in a safe place. That was one unit he meant to handle personally.