A Little Oil
Galaxy Science Fiction – October 1952
(1952)*
Eric Frank Russell
illustrated by FREAS

In this carefully chosen, precision-trained space crew, where did a fumbling bubble-head like Bertelli fit in? Why was he selected?

-

Isn't it strange that princes and kings
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings
And ordinary folk like you and me
Are builders of eternity.

To each is given a bag of tools, 
An hour-glass and a book of rules,
And each must build ere his time has flown
A stumbling-block or a stepping-stone.
Anon.

-

	The ship hummed and thrummed and drummed. It was a low-cycle note, sonorous and penetrating like that produced by the big-pipe octave of a mighty organ. It moaned through hull-plates, groaned out of girders, throbbed along nerves and bones, beat upon tired ears and could not be ignored. Not after a week, a month or a year. Certainly not after most of four years.

	There was no effective cure for the noise. It was the inevitable, unavoidable result of bottling an atomic propulsor within a cylinder of highly conductive metal. The first ship had screeched one hundred cycles higher, minute after minute, hour after hour, and had never returned. Somewhere amid the waste spaces of the infinite, it might still be howling, unheard, unheeded, after thirty years.

	Ship number two had started out with a slag-wool padded engine room and silicone-lined Venturis. The low note. The drone of a burdened bee amplified twenty thousand times. And the bee had not come back to the hive. Eighteen years into the star field and blindly heading onward for another hundred, thousand or ten thousand years.

	The vessel now thundering along was number three, not going outward, but on its way back, heading for home. Nosing toward a not-yet-visible red dot lost in the mist of stars, a strayed soul fumbling for salvation, it was determined not to be damned as others had been damned. Ship number three—that meant something.

	Sea sailors cherish sea superstitions. Space sailors coddle space superstitions. In the captain's cabin where Kinrade sat writing the log, a superstition was pinned to the wall and functioned as a morale' booster.
-
THIRD TIME DOES IT!
-

	They had believed it at the start when the crew had numbered nine. They would believe it at the finish, though reduced to six. But in between times there had been and might again be bad moments of shaken faith when men wanted out at any cost, even the cost of death, and to hell with the ultimate purpose of the flight. Moments when men fought other men in effort to break loose from audiophobia, claustrophobia, half a dozen other phobias.

-

	Kinrade wrote with the pen in his right hand, a blued-steel automatic within easy reach of his left. His eyes concentrated on the log, his ears on the ship and its everlasting drumming. The noise might hesitate, falter or cease, and the blessing of its cessation would be equally a curse. Or other sounds might rise above this persistent background, an oath, a shout, a shot. It had happened once before, when Weygarth cracked. It could happen again.

	Kinrade was somewhat edgy himself, for he jerked in his seat and slid his left hand sidewise when Bertelli came in unexpectedly. Recovering, he swung his chair round on its socket, gazed into the other's sad gray eyes.

	"Well, have they marked it yet?"

	The question startled Bertelli. His long, lugubrious, hollow-cheeked face grew longer. His great gash of a mouth drooped at the corners. The sad eyes took on an expression of hopeless bafflement. He was clumsily embarrassed.

	Recognizing these familiar symptoms, Kinrade became more explicit. "Is Sol visible on the screen?"

	"Sol?" Bertelli's hands tangled together, the fingers like carrots.

	"Our own sun, you imbecile!"

	"Oh, that!" The eyes widened in delighted comprehension. "I haven't asked."

	"I thought maybe you'd come to tell me they've got it spotted at last."

	"No, Captain. It's just that I wondered whether you need any help." His expression switched from its accustomed glumness to the eager smile of a fool more than willing to serve. The mouth lifted, widened so much that it made the ears stick out and reminded the onlooker of a slice of melon.

	"Thanks," said Kinrade, more kindly. "Not right now."

	Bertelli's embarrassment came back in painful strength. His face was humbly apologetic for having asked. After shifting around on his big, ugly feet, he went out. As always, he skidded violently on the steel-floored catwalk, regained balance with a clatter of heavy boots. Nobody else slipped at that spot, but he invariably did.

	Kinrade suddenly realized that he was smiling and changed it to a troubled frown. For the hundredth time he consulted the ship's register, found it no more informative than on the ninety-nine other occasions. There was the little roster with three names of the nine crossed out. And the same entry halfway down: Enrico Bertelli, thirty-two, psychologist.

	It was the bunk. If Bertelli were a psychologist or anything remotely connected with scientific expertness, then he, Robert Kinrade, was a bright blue giraffe. For almost four years they'd been locked together in this groaning cylinder, six men carefully chosen from the great mass of humanity, six men supposed to be the salt of the Earth, the cream of their kind. But the six were five men and a fool.

	There was a puzzle here. It intrigued him in spare moments when he had time to think with a mind untrammeled by serious matters. It dangled before him tantalizingly, making him repeatedly picture its subject all the way down from sad eyes to flat feet. During rare moments of. meditation, he found himself vainly trying to analyze Bertelli and deduce the real reason for his being, concentrating upon him to the temporary exclusion of the others.

	As opportunity occurred, Kinrade watched him, too, marveling that any so-called expert could be so thoroughly and unfailingly nit-witted. He studied Bertelli with such intentness that he failed to notice whether the others might be doing the same for similar reasons born of similar thoughts.

	Yet this concentration was his answer—and he did not know it.

-

	Marsden was duty navigator and Vail stood guard in the engine room when Kinrade went to lunch. The other three already were at the table in the tiny galley. He nodded briefly and took his place.

	Big blond Nilsen, atomic engineer by choice, plus botanist by official coercion, eyed Kinrade skeptically and said, "No sun." "I know?"

	"There ought to be." Kinrade shrugged. "But there isn't," Nilsen persisted.

	"I know." "Do you care?''

	"Don't be a sap." Breaking open a packaged meal, Kinrade tossed it into his compartmented plastic plate.

	Thrum-thrum went the ship from floor, walls and ceiling.

	"So you think I'm a sap, do you?" Nilsen leaned forward, stared with aggressive expectancy.

	"Let's eat," suggested Aram, the thin, dark and nervous cosmogeologist at his side. "One bellyache's enough without hunting another."

	"That's not the point," declared Nilsen. "I want to know—"

	He shut up as Bertelli mumbled, "Pardon me," and reached across him for salt in a container fastened to the other end of the table.

	Unscrewing it, Bertelli brought it to his end, sat down, found himself on the extreme edge of his seat. His eyes popped very slightly in mild surprise. He stood, slid the seat forward on its runners, sat again, knocked the salt off the table. Radiating shame and self-consciousness, he picked it up, used it in the manner of one emptying a large bucket, practically lay full length on the table to screw it in its original position. That task performed, he squirmed backward with his behind in the air, gained the seat again.

	It was the edge and so near that he began to slide off it. The eyes bulged a fraction more widely than before and once again he went through the seat-sliding performance. Finally he sat down, smoothed out an invisible napkin, favored everyone with a look of abject apology.

	Taking in a deep breath, Nilsen said to him, "Sure you wouldn't care for a little more salt?"

	Bertelli's eyes dulled under the impact of the problem, sought his plate, examined it with idiotic care. "No, I don't think so, thank you."

	Surveying his own plate a moment, Nilsen looked up, met Kinrade's eyes, asked, "What's this guy got that others haven't got?"

	Grinning at him, Kinrade replied, "That problem is a corker. I've been trying to figure it out and I can't."

	A half-smile came into Nilsen's features as he confessed, "Neither can I."

	Bertelli said nothing. He went on with his meal, eating in characteristic manner with elbows held high and his hand uncertainly seeking a mouth it could not miss.

-

	Putting a pencil-tip to the screen, Marsden said, "That one looks pink to me. But it may be my imagination."

	Kinrade bent close and had a look. "Too small to be sure. A mere pinpoint."

	"Then I've been kidding myself."

	"Not necessarily. Your eyes may be more color-sensitive than mine."

	"Ask Goofy here," suggested Marsden.

	Bertelli examined the brilliant dot from ten different distances and as many angles. Finally he squinted at it.

	"That can't be it," he announced, triumphant with discovery, "because our sun is orange-red."

	"The fluorescent coating of the Screen would make it look pink," informed Marsden with a touch of impatience. "Does that dot look pink?"

	"I don't know," Bertelli admitted miserably.

	"You're a great help."

	"It's too far away for more than mere guesswork," said Kinrade. "Resolution isn't good enough to cope with such a distance. We'll have to wait until we get a good deal closer."

	"I'm fed up waiting," said Marsden, scowling at the screen.

	"But we're going home," Bertelli reminded him.

	"I know. That's what's" killing me."

	"Don't you want to go home?" Bertelli puzzledly asked.

	"I want to too much." Irritatedly, Marsden rammed the pencil back into his pocket. "I thought I'd stand the inward trip better than the outward one just because it would be homeward. I was wrong. I want green grass, blue skies and plenty of room to move around. I can't wait."

	"I can," said Bertelli, virtuously. "Because I've got to. If I were unable to wait, I'd go nuts."

	"Would you?" Marsden looked him over, the grouch slowly fading from his face. The change went as far as a chuckle. "How much of a trip would that be?"

	Leaving the navigation room, he headed toward the galley, still chuckling as he went. Rounding the farther corner, he let out a low guffaw.

	"What's funny?" asked Bertelli, vacantly mystified.

	Straightening up from the screen, Kinrade eyed him with care. "How is it that whenever somebody starts blowing his—" Changing his mind, he let the sentence die out.

	"Yes, Captain?"

	"Oh, forget it."

	The ship plunged onward, moaning at every plate.

	Vail appeared presently, coming off duty and on his way to eat. He was a short man of great width, with long arms and powerful hands.

	"Any luck?"

	"We're not sure." Kinrade indicated the dot burning amid a confusing host of others. "Marsden thinks that's it. He may be wrong."

	"Don't you know?" asked Vail, looking at him and ignoring the screen Kinrade was pointing to.

	"We will in due time. It's a bit early yet."

	"Changing your tune, aren't you?"

	"What do you mean?" Kinrade's tone was sharp.

	"Three days ago you told us that Sol should become visible in the screen almost any time. That gave us a lift. We needed it. I'm no sniveling babe myself, but I must admit I wanted that boost." He surveyed the other with a touch of resentment. "The higher hopes go, the lower they fall when they drop."

	"I'm not dropping mine," Kinrade said. "Three days plus or minus is a tiny margin of error in a return trip taking two years."

	"That would be true if we're on correct course. Maybe we aren't."

	"Are you suggesting that I'm not competent to work out the proper coordinates?"

	"I'm suggesting that even the best of us can blunder," Vail gave back stubbornly. "In proof of which, two ships have gone to pot."

	"Not because of navigational errors," put in Bertelli, looking unconvincingly profound.

	Pursing his lips, Vail stared at him and inquired, "What the hell do you know about space navigation?"

	"Nothing," Bertelli confessed with the air of one surrendering a back tooth. He nodded toward Kinrade. "But he knows enough." 

	"I wonder!"

-

	"The route for return was worked out in full detail by Captain Sanderson before he died," said Kinrade, his color a little heightened. "I've checked and rechecked at least a dozen times. So has Marsden. If you're not satisfied, you can have the calculations and go through them yourself."

	"I'm not a trained navigator."

	"Then shut your trap and leave other—"

	Bertelli broke in with a note of protest. "But I didn't have it open!"

	Shifting attention to him, Kinrade asked, "You didn't have what open?"

	"My mouth," said Bertelli. He registered personal injury. "Don't know why you have to pick on me. Everyone picks on me."

	"You're wrong," Vail told him. "He—"

	"There you are. I'm wrong. I'm always wrong. I'm never right." Emitting a deep sigh, Bertelli wandered out, dragging big feet. His face was a picture of misery.

	Vail watched him in faint amazement, then said, "That looks to me like a persecution complex. And he's supposed to be a psychologist. What a laugh!"

	"Yes," agreed Kinrade, without humor. "What a laugh!"

	Going to the screen, Vail examined it. "Which one does Marsden think is Sol?"

	"That one." Kinrade pointed it out for him.

	Staring at it hungrily for quite a time, Vail finished, "Oh, well, let's hope he's right." Then he departed.

	Left alone, Kinrade sat in the navigator's chair and looked at the screen without seeing it. His mind was on a problem that might be real or might be imaginary.

	When does science become an art? Or should it be: when does art become a science?

-

	Aram cracked next day. He got a dose of "Charlie," the same psychotic behavior pattern that had put an end to Weygarth. There was a technical name for it, but few knew it and fewer could pronounce it. The slang term came from an ancient, almost forgotten war in which the rear-gunner of a big aircraft—Tail End Charlie—would think too long of the heavy bomb-load and the thousands of gallons of high octane spirit right behind his perspex parrot-cage, and all of a sudden he'd batter upon the walls of his prison, screaming,

	The way Aram broke was characteristic of this space affliction. He sat next to Nilsen, quietly downing his meal, but picking at the compartmented plastic tray as though completely indifferent to food or drink. Then, without a word or the slightest change of expression, he pushed away the tray, got up and ran like hell. Nilsen tried to trip him and failed. Aram shot through the door like a bolting rabbit, raced headlong down the passage toward the airlock.

	Slamming his own chair back to the limit of its holding rails, Nilsen went after him with Kinrade one jump behind. Bertelli stayed in his seat, a forkful of food halfway to his mouth, his gaze fixed blankly on the facing wall while his big ears remained perked for outer sounds.

	They caught Aram frantically struggling with the airlock wheel and trying to force it the wrong way around. Even if he had rotated it the right way, he wouldn't have had time to open it. His thin features were pale and he was snuffling with exertion/

	Reaching him, Nilsen jerked him around by one shoulder, smacked him in the jaw. There was plenty of force behind that blow. Aram, a small, lightly built man, caromed along the passage and ended up as an unconscious bundle by the forward door. Rubbing his knuckles, Nilsen grunted to himself, checked the airlock wheel to make sure it was holding good and tight.

	Then he grasped the victim's feet while Kinrade lifted the shoulders and between them they bore the sagging Aram to his tiny cabin, laid him in his bunk. Nilsen remained on watch while Kinrade went for the hypodermic needle and a shot of dope. They put Aram out of the running for the next twelve hours. This was the only known countermeasure: an enforced sleep during which an overactive brain could rest and strained nerves recuperate.

	Returning to the galley, Nilsen resumed his interrupted meal, said to Kinrade, "Good thing he didn't think to swipe a gun."

	Kinrade nodded without answering. He knew what the other meant. Weygarth had tried to hold them off with a gun while he prepared his dash to false freedom on a blast of air. They could not rush him without risking serious loss. They'd had to shoot him down quickly, ruthlessly, before it was too late. Weygarth had been their first bitter casualty only twenty months out.

	And now they dared not suffer another loss. Five men could run the ship, control it, steer it, land it. Five represented the absolute minimum. Four would be damned forever to a great metal coffin thundering blindly amid the host of stars.

	It brought up yet another of the problems that Kinrade had not been able to resolve, at least to his own satisfaction. Should an airlock be fastened with a real lock to which only the captain held the key? Or might that cost them dear in a sudden and grave emergency? Which was the greater risk, lunatic escape for one or balked escape for all?

	Oh, well, they were homeward bound, and when they got back he'd hand over the log and the detailed reports and leave the big brains, to work it out for themselves. That was their job; his to make landfall safely.

-

	Kinrade glanced at Nilsen, noted the introspective frown on his face and knew that he was thinking of Weygarth. Scientists and top-grade technicians are people with highly trained minds, but that does not make them less or more than other men. Their status does not keep them in splendid isolation from humanity. Outside of their especial interests, they are plain, ordinary folk subject to the strains and tensions of every man. Their minds are not and cannot be solely and everlastingly occupied with one subject. Sometimes they think of other men and sometimes of themselves. Nilsen's was a trained mind, intelligent and sensitive, therefore so much the more liable to crack. Kinrade knew instinctively that if and when Nilsen made a break for the lock, he would not forget the gun.

	It took less intelligent, less imaginative types—the cow-mind—to endure long incarceration in a huge steel boiler on which a dozen devils hammered hour after hour, day after day, without cease or let-up. There was another problem for Earth's bigbrains to mull at while: dull-witted people were tops for endurance, but useless functionally. Bright minds were essential to run the ship, yet somewhat more likely to go phut, even though only temporarily.

	What did this add up to? Answer: the ideal space crew should be composed of hopeless dopes with high I. Q. A contradiction in. terms.

	Now that he came to consider it,  the thought struck him that here might be the solution to the mystery of Bertelli. Those who had designed and built the ship and hand-picked the crew were people of formidable craftiness. It was incredible that they'd dig up a gormless character like Bertelli in a spirit of not giving a damn. The selection had been deliberate and carefully calculated, of that Kinrade was certain. Perhaps the loss of two ships had convinced them that they'd have to be more modest in their choice of crews. Maybe Bertelli had been planted to test how a dope made out.

	If so, they had something—but it wasn't enough. Without a doubt, Bertelli would be the last to crack, the last to race for the airlock. Beyond that, nothing could be said in his favor purely from the technical viewpoint. He knew little worth knowing and that he had learned from the others. Any responsibility with which he was entrusted invariably got bollixed in masterly style. Indeed, with his big, clumsy mitts on any of the controls, he would be a major menace.

	He was liked, all right. In fact, he was popular in a way. Bertelli had other accomplishments about as genuinely useful on a spaceship as a skunk's smell-gun at a convention. He could play several musical instruments, sing in a cracked voice, mime in really funny manner, tap-dance with a peculiar sort of loose-jointed clumsiness. After they'd got over their initial irritation with him, they had found him amusing and pathetic—a bumbler they were sorry to feel superior to, because they couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't be superior to him.

	The schemers back home would learn that a spaceship is better without non-technical thickheads, Kinrade decided rather uncertainly. They had made their test and it hadn't come off. It hadn't come off. It hadn't come off. The more he repeated it to himself, the less sure he felt about it.

	Vail came in, paused at the sight of them. "I thought you'd finished ten minutes ago."

	"It's all right." Nilsen stood up, brushed away crumbs, gestured toward his chair. "I'll go watch the engines."

	Getting his tray and meal, Vail seated himself, eyed the others. "What's up?"

	"Aram's in bed with Charlie," Kinrade told him.

	Not the flicker of emotion crossed Vail's face. He made a vicious stab at his food, said, "The Sun would bring him out of that condition. That's what we all want, a sight of the Sun."

	"There are millions of suns," informed Bertelli, eagerly offering the lot.

	Leaning his elbows on the table, Vail said in a harsh voice and with great significance, "That is precisely the point!"

	Bertelli's eyes dulled into complete confusion. He fidgeted with his tray, knocked his fork around without noticing it. Still looking at Vail, he felt for the fork, picked it up by the prongs, absently poked at the tray with the handle. Then he lifted the handle toward his mouth.

	"I'd try the other end," advised Vail, watching with interest. "It's sharper."

	The eyes lowered, studied the fork while gradually they took on an expression of vacant surprise. He made a childish motion indicative of helplessness. Finally he bestowed on both his usual apologetic grin and at the same time gave a casual twitch of finger and thumb that landed the handle smack in his palm.

	Kinrade noticed that flip. Vail didn't, but he did—and for once he got a strange, uncanny feeling that Bertelli had made a very small mistake, a tiny error that might have passed unseen.

-

	When Kinrade was in his cabin, the intercom called on the desk and Marsden's voice said, "Aram's just come out of it. He's got a sore jaw, but he seems cooled down. I don't think he needs another shot—yet."

	"We'll let him run loose, but keep an eye on him for a while," Kinrade decided. "Tell Bertelli to stick close. He has nothing better to do."

	"All right." Marsden paused, added in lower tones, "Vail is pretty surly lately. Have you noticed?"

	"He's okay. Just gets jumpy now and again. Don't we all?"

	"I suppose so." Marsden sounded as if he'd like to say more, but he didn't. He cut off and the intercom went silent.

	Finishing the day's entry on the log, Kinrade examined himself at the mirror, decided he'd put off a shave a little longer. This was his idea of petty luxury; he disliked the chore, but lacked the courage to grow a beard. Other men, other notions.

	He lay back in his chair and enjoyed a quiet think, first about the planet called home, then the men who had sent this ship into space, then the men who were flying it with him. They'd been trained for the job, these six who, for the first time, had reached another star, and their training had incorporated a certain amount of useful flexibility. The three spacemen among them had been given superswift education in some branch of science. The scientists had undergone courses in space navigation or atomic engineering. Two aptitudes per man. Then he thought again and eliminated Bertelli.

	Pre-flight education had gone further than that. A baldheaded old coot who bossed a lunatic asylum had lectured them on space etiquette with every air of knowing what he was talking about. Each man, he had explained, would know only three things about his fellows, to wit: name, age and qualification. No man must ask for more nor seek to pry into another's private life. Unknown lives provide no basis for irrational prejudices, antagonisms or insults, he had said. Empty personalities don't clash so readily. So it was established that none might urge another to reveal what made him tick.

	Thus Kinrade could not probe the reasons why Vail was irritable above the average or what made Marsden more impatient than others. He could not determine from past data why Nilsen potentially was the most dangerous or Aram the least stable. Neither could he insist that Bertelli explain his presence in understandable terms. Pending successful completion of the flight, each man's history remained hidden behind a curtain through which, from time to time only insignificant items had been glimpsed.

	After most of four years existing cheek by jowl with these people, he had» come to know them as never before—but not as he would know them some day in the green fields of Earth when the flight was a bygone event, the tabu was broken and they had memories for free discussion.

	He liked to muse on these matters because he had developed a theory that he intended to dump right in the laps of the experts. It concerned lifers in penitentiaries. Not all criminals are stupid, he believed. Many might be intelligent, sensitive men somehow pushed or kicked off the path called straight and narrow. Walled up, some of them would get a dose of Charlie, try to bust out, beat up a warder, anything, anything to escape—and be rewarded for their efforts with solitary confinement. It was like treating a poisoned man with an even more powerful dose of what had made him ill. It was wrong, wrong. He was convinced of that. There was a reformist streak in Kinrade.

	Upon his desk he had a neatly written scheme for the treatment of lifers likely to go psycho. It involved constant individual observation and the timely use of occupational therapy. Whether or not it was practical, he didn't know, but at least it was constructive. The plan was his pet. He wanted leading penologists to play with it, give it a serious tryout. If it worked—and he felt that it should—the world would have derived one benefit from this flight in a way not originally contemplated. Even that alone made it profitable.

-

	At that point, his thoughts were brought to an abrupt end by the arrival of Nilsen, Vail and Marsden. Behind them, waiting in the doorway, but not entering, was Aram with Bertelli in attendance. Kinrade braced himself in his seat and spoke gruffly.

	"This is great. Nobody at the controls."

	"I switched on the autopilot," Marsden said. "It will hold her on course four or five hours. You said so yourself."

	"True." His eyes examined them. "Well, why the scowling deputation?"

	"This is the end of the fourth day," Nilsen pointed out. "Soon we'll be into the fifth. And we're still looking for Sol."

	"So?"

	"I'm not satisfied that you know where we're going."

	"I am."

	"Is that a fact or more face-saving?"

	Kinrade stood up, said, "For the sake of argument, suppose I admitted that we're running blind—what could you do about it?"

	"That's an easy one." Nilsen's air was that of one whose suspicions have almost been confirmed. "We picked you for captain after Sanderson died. We'd withdraw the vote and choose somebody else."

	"And then?"

	"Make for the nearest star, hunt around for a planet we can live on."

	"Sol is the nearest star."

	"It is if we're heading right," Nilsen retorted.

	Sliding open a drawer in his desk, Kinrade took out a large roll of paper, spread it across the top. Its multitude of tiny squares bore a large number of dots and crosses amid which a thick, black line ran in a steady curve.

	"This is the return course." His fingers indicated several crosses and dots. "We can tell by direct observation of these bodies whether or not we are on course. There's only one thing we can't check with absolute accuracy."

	"What's that?" inquired Vail, frowning at the chart.

	"Our velocity. It can be estimated only with a five per cent margin of error, plus or minus. I know we're on course, but not precisely how far along it. Hence the four-day lag. I warn you that it can extend to as much as ten."

	Nilsen said, heavily, "They took photos of the star formation on the way out. We've just been putting the transparencies over the screen. They don't match."

	"Of course they don't." Kinrade displayed impatience. "We're not at the same point. The star field will have circumferential displacement."

	"We aren't without brains despite not being trained navigators," Nilsen gave back. "There is displacement. It progresses radially from a focal point that is not the pink spot you claim is Sol. The point is about halfway between that and the left edge of the screen." He gave a loud sniff, invited, "Can you talk yourself out of that one?"

	Kinrade sighed, put a finger on the chart. "This line is a curve, as you can see. The outward course was a similar curve bending the reverse way. The tail camera focused along the line of the ship's axis. A few thousand miles out, it was pointing sunward, but the farther the ship got, the more its axis pointed to one side. By the time we crossed the orbit of Pluto, it was aiming to hell and away."

	Peering at the chart, Nilsen thought a while, asked shrewdly, "If you are sincere, what's the absolute margin of error?"

	"I told you—ten days."

	"Nearly half of those have gone. We'll give you the other half."

	"Thanks!" said Kinrade, faintly sarcastic.

	"After which we'll either see Sol and identify it beyond doubt or we'll have a new captain and be heading for the nearest light."

	"We'll draw lots for captain," suggested Bertelli from the back. "I'd like the chance to boss a ship."

	"Heaven help us!" exclaimed Marsden.

	"We'll pick the man best qualified," said Nilsen.

	"That's why you chose Kinrade in the first place;" Bertelli reminded him.

	"Maybe. But we'll find someone else."

	"Then I insist on being considered. One dope is as good as another for making a mess of things."

	"When it comes to that, we're not in the same class," replied Nilsen, feeling that his efforts were being subtly sabotaged. "You can out-boob me with your big hands pinned to your big ears." He looked over the others. "Isn't that so?"

	They grinned assent.

	It wasn't Nilsen's triumph. It was somebody else's.

	Merely because they did grin.

-

	Bertelli organized another party that night. For once his birthday was not the pretext. Somehow he'd managed to celebrate seven birthdays in four years without anyone seeing fit to count them all. But an excuse can be overdone, so he announced his candidacy for the post of captain, explaining that he wished to curry favor with voters. It was as good as any.

	They cleared the galley as they'd done a score of times before. They broke a bottle of gin, shared it between them, sipped with introspective glumness. Aram did his party-piece by bird-calling between two fingers, received the usual polite applause. Marsden recited something about the brown eye of the little yellow dog. By that time Nilsen had warmed up sufficiently to sing two songs in a deep, rich bass. He gained louder applause for having varied his repertoire.

	Weygarth, of course, wasn't there to do his sleight-of-hand tricks. Sanderson and Dawkins were also missing from the bill. Temporarily, their absence was forgotten as the tiny audience awaited the star turn.

	Bertelli, of course. This was the sort of thing at which he excelled and the chief reason why a major nuisance had become tolerated, liked, perhaps loved.

	When they'd held the alien landfall spree, he'd played an oboe for most of an hour, doing more things with the instrument than they had believed possible. He had ended with a sonic impression of an automobile collision, the agitated toot of horns, the crash, the heated argument between oboe-voiced drivers that finished with decidedly rude noises. Nilsen had almost rolled out of his seat.

	On the way home, there had been a couple more whoopees arranged for no reason other than the hell of it. Bertelli had mimed for those, his dental plates removed, his features rubbery, his arms like snakes. First the eager sailor leaping ashore and seeking a chance to play his own strumpet. The search for talent, the discovery, pursuit, encounter, rebuff, the persuasion, the going to a show, the strolling home, the pass on the doorstep rewarded with a black-eye.

	Another time he'd reversed the role, become a plump blonde followed by a hungry sailor. Wordlessly, but with motions, gestures, posturings and facial expressions equal to if not better than speech, he had taken them on the night's prowl ending with the fight on the doorstep.

	This time he pretended to be a bashful sculptor shaping a statue of Venus de Milo with invisible clay. Piling up a column of what wasn't there, he hesitantly stroked it, nervously patted it, embarrassedly smoothed it into near-visible form. He rolled two cannon-balls, plonked them on her chest while covering his eyes, rolled two pills and shyly put them on top, delicately molded them into shape, glanced frightenedly around, then bestowed a hurried kiss on his own handiwork.

	It took him twenty hilarious minutes to make her almost, but not quite, complete, at which point he took idiotic alarm. He scanned the horizon, looked out the door, peered under the table to insure that they two were alone. Satisfied yet full of embarrassment, he made a faltering approach, withdrew, plucked up fresh courage, lost it again, had a spasm of daring that failed at the critical moment.

	Vail offered pungent advice while Nilsen sprawled in the next seat and held an aching diaphragm. Summoning up everything he had in an effort to finish the job, Bertelli made a mad rush at it, fell over his own feet, slid on his face along the steel floor-plates. Nilsen made choking sounds. Stupidly enraged with himself, Bertelli shot to his feet, drew his bottom lip over the tip of his nose, waggled his bat-ears, closed his eyes, made one violent stab with a forefinger—and provided Venus with a navel.

	For days afterward, they chuckled over that performance, making curvaceous motions with their hands or prodding each other in the paunch at odd moments. The ghostly Venus stayed good for a laugh until ... the Sun came up.

-

	Making another of his frequent checks late in the eighth day, Marsden found that one of the transparencies now coincided dot for dot with focal point two inches leftward of an enlarged pink glow. He let go a howl that brought the rest of the crew racing to the bow. 

	Sol was identified. They looked at it, licked lips over it, looked again. Four years in a bottle is like forty years in the star fields—and they had been bottled too long. One by one they visited Kinrade's cabin and exulted over the superstition on the wall.

-
THIRD TIME DOES IT!
-

	Morale boosted way up. The ships drumming and thrumming somehow lost its hellishness and took on a heartening note of urgency. Jangled nerves accepted the new and different strain of anticipation right to the glorious moment when a voice from Earth came feebly through the radio receiver. The voice strengthened day by day, week by week, until finally it bawled from the speaker while the fore observation-port was filled with half a planet.

	"From where I'm standing, I can see an ocean of faces turned toward the sky," said the announcer. "There must be half a million people present, sharing the most eventful hour in history. At any moment now, folks, you will hear the distant drone of the first spaceship to return from another star. I just can't tell you how much—"

	What followed the landing was the worst part. The blaring bands, the thunder of cheers. The handshakes, speeches, the posing for press photographers, newsreels, television scanners, the cameras of countless frantic amateurs.

	It ended at last. Kinrade said farewell to his crew, felt the bear-trap grip of Nilsen's hand, the soft, frank clasp of Aram, the shy, self-conscious touch of Bertelli.

	Looking into the latter's mournful eyes, he said, "The authorities will now start howling for all the data we've got. I suppose you've finished your book."

	"What book?"

	"Now, now, don't kid me." He offered a knowing wink. "You're the official psychologist, aren't you?"

	He didn't wait for an answer. While the others busied themselves collecting personal belongings, he got the log and the file of reports, took them to the Administration Building.

-

	Looking no different for the passage of time, Bancroft sat paunchily behind his desk, said with satirical satisfaction, "You are now looking at a fat man wallowing in the joys of promotion and higher salary."

	"Congratulations." Kinrade dumped the books and sat down, 

	"I would swap both for youth and adventure." Casting an anticipatory glance at what the other had brought, Bancroft went on, "There are questions I'm bursting to ask. But the answers are hidden somewhere in that pile and I guess you're in a hurry to go home."

	"A 'copter will pick me up when it can get through the overcrowded air. I have twenty minutes to spare."

	"In that case I'll use them." Bancroft leaned forward, eyes intent. "What about the first two ships?"

	"We searched seven planets Not a sign."

	"They hadn't landed or crashed?"

	"No."

	"So they must have gone on?"

	"Evidently."

	"Any idea why?"

	Kinrade hesitated, said, "It's a hunch and nothing more. I think their numbers were reduced by, accident, sickness or whatever. They became too few to retain control of the ship." He paused, added, "We lost three men ourselves."

	"Tough luck." Bancroft looked unhappy. "Who were they?"

	"Weygarth, Dawkins and Sanderson. The first died on the way out. He never saw the new sun, much less his own. The story is there." He gestured toward the reports. "The other two were killed on the fourth planet, which I've established as unsafe for human habitation."

	"What's wrong with it?"

	"A big and hungry life-form exists under the surface, sitting with traps held open beneath a six-inch crust of soil. Sanderson walked around, fell into a red, sloppy mouth four feet wide by ten long. He was gulped from sight. Dawkins rushed to his rescue, but dropped into another." His fingers fumbled with each other as he finished, "There was nothing we could do, not a damned thing."

	"A pity, a great pity." Bancroft shook his head slowly from side to side. "How about the other planets?"

	"Four are useless. Two are made to measure for us."

	"Hah, that's something!" He glanced at the small clock on his desk, continued hurriedly, "And now the ship. Doubtless your reports are full of criticisms. Nothing is perfect, not even the best we've produced. What do you consider its most outstanding fault?"

	"The noise. It could drive you out of your mind. It needs cutting out."

	"Not completely," Bancroft contradicted. "There is psychic terror in absolute silence."

	"All right. Then it needs cutting down to more endurable level. Try it yourself for a week and see how you like it."

	"I wouldn't. The problem is being beaten, although slowly. We have a new and quieter type of engine already on the test-bench. Four years' progress, you know."

	"We need it," said Kinrade.

-

	Bancroft went on, "And what do you think of the crew?"

	"Best ever."

	"They ought to be. We skimmed the world for the cream—nothing less was good enough. Each man was tops in his own particular line."

	"Including Bertelli?"

	"I knew you'd ask about him." Bancroft smiled as if at a secret thought. "You want me to explain him, eh?"

	"I've no right to insist, but I'd certainly like to know why you included such a dead weight."

	"We lost two ships," said Bancroft, looking serious. "One could be an accident. Two were not. It's hard to believe that an exceptional kind of breakdown or a collision with a lump of rock or some other million-to-one chance would occur twice running."

	"I don't believe it myself."

	"We spent years studying the problem," Bancroft continued. "Every time we got the same answer: it wasn't due to any defect in the vessels. The cause lay somewhere in the human element. Short of a four-year test on living men, we could do no more than speculate. Then one day the likely solution popped up by sheer chance."

	"How?"

	"We were in this very room, beating our brains for the hundredth or two-hundredth time, when that clock stopped." He indicated the timepiece facing him. "A fellow named Whittaker from the Space Medicine Research Station wound it up, shook it, got it going. Immediately afterward a brainwave hit him, kerplonk!"

	Picking up the clock, Bancroft opened its back, turned it toward his listener.

	"What do you see?"

	"Cogs and wheels."

	"Nothing else?"

	"Couple of coiled springs."

	"Are you sure that is all?"

	"All that matters," declared Kinrade, having no doubt.

	"Wrong, dead wrong," said Bancroft, positively, "You have made precisely the mistake we made with ships number one and two. We built giant metal clocks, fitted them with human cogs and wheels accurately designed for their purpose. Cogs and wheels of flesh and blood, chosen with the same care as one would choose parts for a fine watch. But the clocks stopped. We had overlooked something that Whittaker suddenly thought of."

	"Well, what was it?"

	Bancroft smiled and said, "A little oil."

	"Oil?" exclaimed Kinrade, sitting up.

	"Our error was natural. In a technological age, we technicians tend to think we're the whole cheese. We aren't. Maybe we're a very considerable slice, but we are not the lot. Civilization is composed of others also, the housewife, the taxi driver, the dime store salesgirl, the postman, the hospital nurse, the corner cop. It would be a hell of a civilization built solely on boys pushing studs of computor-machines and without the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker. That's a lesson some of us needed to learn."

	"You've got something," Kinrade agreed, "but I don't know what."

	"We had another problem in our laps," said Bancroft. "What sort of oil must you use for human cogs and wheels? Answer: human oil. What kind of individual specializes in being oil?"

	"And you dug up Bertelli?"

	"We did. His family has been oil for twenty generations. He is the present holder of a great tradition—and internationally famous."

	"Never heard of him. I suppose he traveled with us under a false name?"

	"He went under his own."

	"I didn't recognize him," Kinrade persisted. "Neither did anyone else. So how can he be famous? Or did he have his face altered by plastic surgery?"

	"He changed it completely in one minute flat." Getting up, Bancroft lumbered to a filing cabinet, opened it, sought through several folders. Extracting a full-plate glossy photography, he slid it across the desk. "All he did to his face was wash it."

	Picking up the picture, Kinrade stared at the chalk-white features, the cone-shaped hat set rakishly On a high, false skull, the huge eyebrows arched in perpetual surprise, the red diamonds painted around the mournful eyes, the grotesque, bulbous nose, the crimson ear-to-ear mouth, the thick ruff of lace around the neck.

	"Coco!"

	"The twentieth Coco with which this world has been blessed," Bancroft confirmed.

	Kinrade had another long look. "May I keep this?"

	"Certainly. I can get a thousand more copies any time I want."

-

	Kinrade emerged from the Administration Building just in time to see the subject of his thoughts in hot pursuit of a ground-taxi.

	With a shapeless and hurriedly packed bag swinging wildly from one hand, Bertelli went along in exaggerated, loose-jointed bounds with big boots rising waist-high, while his long neck protruded forward and his face bore a ludicrous expression of woe.

	Many a time the onlooker had been puzzled by the fleeting familiarity of one of Bertelli's poses or gestures. Now, knowing what he did know, he recognized instantly the circus jester's classic anxiety-gallop across a sawdust ring. To make it complete, Bertelli should have been casting frightened glances over one shoulder at a floating skeleton attached to him by a long cord.

	Bertelli caught up with the taxi, bestowed an inane smile, slung his bag inside and clambered after it. The taxi whirled away with twin spurts of vapor from its underbody jets.

	For a long minute, Kinrade stood looking absently at the poised spaceships and the sky. His mind was viewing the world as a gigantic stage on which every man, woman and child played a wonderful and necessary part.

	And holding the whole show together with laughter, exaggerating temper and hostility and conflict into absurdity, was the clown.

	If he'd had to assemble the crew, he couldn't have picked a better psychologist than Bertelli.

The End