THE STAR WALK
New Worlds - March 1955
(1955)*
James White
Illustrated by QUINN

Star Walk No. 17C was a postal area on the rim of the Galaxy. As such it was served by Courier ships bearing mail and exchanging scientific knowledge for the advancement of the far-flung colonies. As in a bygone age when the Pony Express thundered across the prairie—the mail had to go through.

-

I

	He'd certainly picked a fine spot to land this trip, Carmicheal thought disgustedly as the creep bounced and jolted its way towards the grounded C-ship; frozen, iron-hard soil split by a maze of cracks and gullies and strewn with rocks of every shape and size. But there was a very good reason for the C-man landing in an inaccessible section, he knew; a reason good enough to make the physical discomfort of the pick-up man of no importance at all.

	The C-man wanted to live as long as possible.

	But the punishment certain parts of his body was taking wasn't the cause of his present anxiety. Neither was the thought of similar suffering being endured by Evelyn in the seat beside him—after all, she had more or less asked for this. What really had him worried was, what would the C-man's reaction be when he saw two people in the creep instead of one?

	A basalt outcropping beside the creep suddenly emitted an ear-splitting crack, glowed rapidly from dull red to white incandescence, and slumped into a puddle of lava. Simultaneously the C-ship's outside speaker thundered "Halt!"

	Carmicheal halted.

	For a while there was silence. The wind, which had been steadily rising since they'd set out, gently rocked the body of the creep on its springs. Heat from the newly-made pool of lava made the car's transparent canopy on that side steam up and trickle moisture. A different kind of moisture—the cold sweat of fear—gathered on Carmicheal's forehead, and his hands were suddenly slippery on the wheel.

	The madman, he raged impotently to himself; the crazy, trigger-happy son of a—"

	There are two people in your vehicle," the Speaker roared at them. From high up on the tall grey ghost that was the C-ship a flare arced towards them and burst, abruptly augmenting the semi-dusk that the gathering storm had brought. Still unbearably amplified, the voice blared, "What is the meaning of this? Why is the woman with you?"

	He suddenly knew that this whole stunt had been insane from the start. He could have talked Evelyn out of the idea, but he hadn't. Instead, like the big-mouthed braggart he was, he'd told her to come along. He'd take her on the pick-up trip. He'd show her a C-ship real close up. Maybe she'd even get to talk to the C-man ... Carmicheal writhed in self-revulsion. The things a man will do to impress a girl; especially if it's the girl he hopes to marry.

	C-men didn't appreciate tricks, even innocent ones. They'd no sense of humour at all. But because the C-man had identified himself on landing as Carlsen, and Carlsen had been a regular caller at the colony world Helena, Carmicheal had been sure that there would be no danger. Carlsen would know that nobody here would try to pull anything—at least, that was the way Carmicheal had figured it. And while the usual routine of sending and recording had been going on, he'd gone out in the creep to pay what was cynically referred to as the 'taxes', taking Evelyn with him. He'd been sure of their safety, but that was small consolation now. After being almost cooked with a heat beam ...

	The voice of the C-man came crashing into his thoughts.

	"Talk fast," it boomed. "And this will have to be good."

	Hurriedly, Carmicheal flipped on the creep's transmitter and said respectfully, "I'm sorry, sir. But you see ..." He talked fast and fluently, explaining the reason for Evelyn being with him, who she was, and how innocent the whole thing had been. As he talked he felt a slow burn creep up from his neck and over his face and ears. Carmicheal was acutely aware that he wasn't talking like the brave character that he liked to appear before Evelyn. But Evelyn's opinion of him was, after all, a small thing when compared with her safety. He glanced aside at her, but her hand was shielding her eyes from the light of the flare, and the rest of her features were unreadable—she could be thinking anything. He finished his explanation and waited.

	"Outside," came the C-man's voice. "Both of you."

	Evelyn didn't say anything as he helped her out of the creep, but her face showed her growing realisation of the deadly danger that was here. They stood well out of range of secondary radiation, knowing that the immaterial fingers of a search beam was probing the metal of the creep, looking for concealed weapons. The icy gale tugged at their coveralls and made their unprotected faces waxy with cold. The C-man began talking again. It sounded almost a monologue, Carmicheal thought.

	He was a very suspicious man. He began by reminding them of the number of times C-men had been forced to shoot first and interrogate afterwards because of stunts similar to this—always supposing that this was a stunt, and as innocent as it appeared. He went on to suggest that maybe it wasn't a stunt, insinuating that, while he knew their vehicle was unarmed, under certain circumstances the presence of a woman would be armament enough ...

	He sounded, Carmicheal thought, very angry and emotional about the whole thing. It wasn't ... characteristic.

	At first Carmicheal couldn't bring himself to look at Evelyn. But as the voice continued its tirade his embarrassment was drowned by a rapidly growing wave of suspicion. There was something wrong here. That voice: it was too slurred, too sibilant, and it kept growing and fading in volume. It wasn't the voice of the Carlsen he'd known. Instead, it sounded like a very bad recording, he thought, or a highly-amplified whisper might sound something like that. He turned to Evelyn. In a low tone, despite the distance they were from the ship, he said, "That voice. It sounds ... funny."

	"So it sounds funny," Evelyn said, the cold making her teeth chatter suddenly. She tried to sound matter-of-fact, unworried, but her voice was pitched a little too high. "Well, why don't we all laugh?"

	She turned abruptly and scrambled over the rocks towards the creep. The residual radiation from the search beam would have had time to dissipate by now. Carmicheal followed her.

-

	If, he thought, the man in the C-ship wasn't Carlsen—though the yoke records at landing identification had checked—it could mean only one thing. Sundberg, or one of the other mobs, had got hold of another C-ship and intended setting up in business for themselves. It that was so, things were going to be very bad, both in general and in particular. Besides the normal levies, Helena would now also have to pay 'protection' to the Sundberg combine; and if that wasn't a C-man on the ship practically anything could happen to Evelyn and himself personally, and none of it would be pleasant. And he'd got her into all this—him and his big mouth.

	As he helped an icily silent Evelyn up into the creep he tried to for an apology. But the voice from the ship drowned him out.

	"I suppose you're harmless," it said. "But don't make any sudden movements. You may approach the ship." It paused while the creep resumed its journey, then went on; "I want payment in fuel this time. I'm running short—"

	"But we've got credits," Carmicheal burst out. "And we're short •urselves—"

	"Shut up, and do as you're told—" The voice broke off witk a sharp intake of breath. It resumed, rapidly and with what Carmicheal thought was almost a note of pleading. "If you are re-broadcasting this over your creep's transmitter, please stop. This is a personal message." A brief pause; then: "Drive up close to the ship, Mr. Carmicheal, then come aboard. It's to your advantage. Hurry."

	With his mind a mass of tangled question marks, Carmicheal brought the creep to a skidding halt at the base of the ship. No one was ever invited aboard a C-ship-—they carried too much stuff that was valuable. No one was ever given a personal message by a C-man. And C-men never said 'please' to anybody. He saw, as he jumped to the ground that Evelyn was looking at him with something like awe in her expression.

	He saw the warped and heat-discoloured condition of the hull around the air-lock, and the broken, partly-fused pieces of glass scattered on the floor plating, then he was inside being whisked up to the control-room by an uncomfortably fast elevator. Even during that seconds-long journey he was shocked by the intensity of his feeling at being inside a spaceship again.

	He'd missed it terribly.

	It was Carlsen all right in the control-room. He was lying on the acceleration couch, with one hand holding a mike to his lips. The other sleeve of his tunic had been ripped up to the shoulder, and both leg seams had been cut to above the knees. The three exposed limbs were plastered with the sharp-smelling green goo used for the emergency treatment of radiation burns. His face was like dirty putty. Carmicheal had to bend over him to hear what he was saying.

	"The ship is booby-trapped. If you try anything, there's enough fissionable material aboard to blow a chunk out of this planet ..." His voice faded, but with a visible effort Carlsen forced it up to a barely audible whisper. "I need medical attention. If you can have me patched up enough to finish this trip, you'll be compensated— generously. I'll see to that."

	So this was the high and mighty C-man, Carmicheal thought bitterly; buying secrecy, buying help, and through it all, still managing to bully everyone into co-operation with the invincible armament of his ship. But his bitterness, he knew, was born chiefly of envy. And, after all, the man was in a very bad way.

	"None of my specialities include medicine," Carmicheal said, then stopped. Carlsen had passed out. He looked like staying out for a long time.

	Carmicheal gently took the mike from the C-man's limp hand. He turned down the volume so that his voice would reach only to the creep at the base of the ship and said softly. "Evelyn. Come up here. Carlsen is injured—burns and radiation poisoning mostly. Bring the kit from the creep, climb in the way you saw me do, then stand in the elevator and I'll take you up from here."

	Evelyn would be able to do something, he knew. Like most colonists she was expert in more than one subject—they had to be to survive in the early days of a colony—and hers, he remembered, were administration, hydroponics, and medicine. She would need all her medical knowledge now.

-

II

	With his hand resting gently on the remote-control switches for the elevator that was bringing up Evelyn, Carmicheal sat on the edge of the Main Control desk and gazed slowly around. In essentials it was the same as his own control room had been six years ago—though his had been a passenger ship with consequently a much less elaborate Ordnance Panel. In details though, it was vastly different. There were a lot of little gadgets here and there that he thought he should have understood, but didn't. Still, he consoled himself, there were bound to be a lot of modifications and improvements in six years. And anyway, he'd never actually been in a C-ship before.

	But he was completely certain that, given the chance, he could take this C-ship out and put her down on any charted planet in the galaxy. He hadn't forgotten everything.

	Carmicheal felt himself tremble as a sudden, almost overwhelming compulsion rose in him—a compulsion to sit at that Main Control panel and take up this great big beautiful monster of a ship. It would be so easy, too. Taking Evelyn, he could go to the Central Worlds. There the stars crowded so thick and close and bright that the sight of them caught you by the throat. There the living was stately, gracious, civilised—though there was plenty of excitement too, for those looking for it. Carmicheal had been born on a planet of one of the Central star systems. When he compared the slow, leisurely life of his youth with his existence here on Helena, where there was nothing in the night sky but the mist of the galactic lens and a lousy handful of second-magnitude stars, and where a man had to do the work of three to keep himself and the colony functioning ...

-

	Savagely he forced those thoughts out of his mind. He'd adjusted to life on Helena. It was a good life, a worthwhile life, and pleasant even—in a strenuous sort of way. And there were nice people. He liked it here.

	Liar! said a tiny voice in his brain, but it didn't say it loud enough to bother him. He continued his visual examination of the control room.

	It was a nice, compact set-up. The panel he was sitting at was Main Control. From it the ship was raised, manoeuvred, navigated through sub-space, and landed. Close by and at right angles to it was the Communications panel. It was almost fully-automatic in operation, and Carmicheal could see that it was working at the moment transmitting the contents of a tape to the recorders in Helena's capital city. Opposite Communications was the ship's Ordnance panel, where the touch of a finger could produce anything from the mild sunburn of a wide dispersion heat beam to the unimaginable holocaust of pattern fusion-bombing. A U-shaped double rail linked the three panels, and the pilot's couch—running on this—could be shot rapidly from one to another by a touch of a foot pedal.

	Naturally, it was the Ordnance panel which interested Carmicheal most.

	A set of balefully glowing lights gave the information that the ship's forward heat beam had been recently discharged and was still in readiness. But the rest of the panel was either in darkness or showing the green of Operable-But-On-Safety.

	Carmicheal gave an incredulous look when the implications of that fact hit him. But his eyes hadn't been playing tricks. According to that panel there were no booby-traps, no bombs set to discharge automatically, nothing. He could clearly see that the fusion bombs Carlsen had threatened the planet with had not even been primed.

	With a shock Carmicheal found himself laughing aloud. As it stood, the mighty C-ship was about as defenceless as a baby in its perambulator. More defenceless, he thought as he looked down at the unconscious Carlsen; this was a very sick baby.

	The elevator arrived with Evelyn then, pushing temporarily out of his mind the potentialities of the situation; they were mind-shaking, frightening, and too great to be grasped all at once. Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded her towards the injured C-man and watched her go to work.

	"He's very ... young." There was pity in her tone.

	Suddenly angry for some reason, Carmicheal said sharply: "They catch them young, while their reflexes are still fast."

	Disregarding his tone, Evelyn continued working. After a time she straightened up and sighed. Speaking in little more than a whisper, she said :

	"He's beyond the stage where purely medical treatment will do any good. He needs surgery—an amputation and leg graft, maybe two— and he needs it quickly." She paused and glanced down at Carlsen to make sure he was still out and couldn't hear her before going on. "He's had a bad dose of radiation recently, and is still partially in shock from the attendant surface burns. The shock will pass in a little while, but the destruction of tissue by the radiation is serious. If he isn't hospitalised soon, he'll be dead in two weeks. He might," she ended gravely, "die anyway."

	"He wanted to be patched up enough to finish his trip," Carmicheal said. Is that possible?"

	Evelyn shook her head. "He'll soon have lost the power to move his hands and legs—localised destruction of nerve tissue. I don't think he could even take off ..."

	That, Carmicheal thought, eased his conscience somewhat. Carlsen couldn't possibly work the ship with one hand. And if the C-man was planet-bound—and probably due to die anyway—what he was planning to do wouldn't be so bad. Why, given the same chance, practically any man in the colony would do the same.

	If, said the little voice deep down in his mind, he was a louse like you, he probably would.

	He was saved from answering it by the realisation that Evelyn had resumed talking.

	"... So you see, I can't do a thing for him here. We've got to get him to one of the colony specialists right away."

	Carmicheal straightened up. "You're forgetting something," he said drily. "This is a C-man. C-men aren't ...popular, and he's defenceless off his ship. We'll have to make the specialist come to him. There's a good radiation man—a friend of your father's—who could be trusted to keep quiet about all this. We'll get him—" Carmicheal broke off. Carlsen had come to.

-

	"I heard a little of that," said the C-man. "Thanks." They had to bend to hear him as he went on. "But are you sure this man can patch me up? It's very important I finish this trip." He stopped abruptly, as if, Carmicheal thought, he'd almost said too much.

	Evelyn smiled down at him. "Sure he will," she said, and made it sound as though she meant it. The C-man looked relieved and switched his attention to Carmicheal.

	"I've something for you. Three tapes—two thousand credits worth. Do you want them?"

	"Two thousand credits!"

	It had become almost a conditioned reflex with Carmicheal, these attempts at beating down the price. First he registered shocked incredulity at the exorbitant sum being asked. Then followed an attempt to discover something about the data on the tapes, so that Carmicheal could belittle its importance by telling the other that the colony was getting nowhere with that particular line of research. Information was of variable value—you could get something that would save three years work for practically nothing, but you could also go broke getting data you might already have discovered. Usually Carmicheal's bargaining was done over the two-way radio. Actually being able to talk to the C-man should substantially increase his chances of success.

	But Carlsen was an experienced man; he refused to be tricked into giving clues about his information. Carmicheal reluctantly raised from seven hundred to eight hundred credits, and began telling a hard-luck story about the tough times the colony was having. The story was eighty per cent true, but he'd never realised he could be so eloquent.

	Evelyn cut suddenly into the conversation. Carmicheal was shocked to see how angry she was. White-lipped, and with her eyes practically shooting sparks, she said very softly, "I told you this man needs treatment quickly. Is all this haggling necessary?"

	Before Carmicheal could reply, the C-man said, "It's my fault. I forgot you were helping me for a few minutes there. Take them for eight hundred."

	He'd just saved the colony twelve hundred credits, Carmicheal thought as the elevator took the three of them down to the entry port. Yet he didn't feel a bit proud of it.

	The haggling had been unnecessary, a mere force of habit. Several people would have to know that the C-man was off his ship; that was unavoidable. But he, Carmicheal, was the only one who knew that the ship was defenceless. That ship—containing hundreds of tapes, all labelled and sorted—represented so much concentrated wealth that the thought of it made his mind whirl. And, providing he didn't do anything stupid, that ship and everything in it would be his.

	How does it feel, asked the little voice in his head, to be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams?

	It feels just fine, he told it. But he felt like adding that it would feel much better if he wasn't suffering from the vestigal remains of a conscience.

-

III

	Carlsen was unconscious again when they got him to the creep. Manoeuvring him into the tiny cabin without adding to his injuries was a slow, back-breaking job, but their exertions kept them from suffering too much from the cold. When they were inside, Carmicheal had to switch on the ground radar, because to make matters worse, the whole rugged and unbeautiful terrain had disappeared behind a stinging curtain of gale-driven snow. The radar would give warning of any obstruction too big to be climbed, but it couldn't indicate holes in the ground. He would know about those only if he happened to fall into one.

	When they'd been on their way about ten minutes Carmicheal said, "There's a place two miles from here—living quarters for a weather control station we were hoping to build. He'll be safe there. I'll leave you with him, then go into town for the Second Citizen and the doctor. O.K.?"

	"Yes," Evelyn said coldly. "But hurry."

	He looked sideways at Evelyn, who was trying to cushion the injured C-man against the jolting vibration of the creep. He and Evelyn could be the richest couple in the whole sector, Carmicheal knew. She wouldn't approve of what he meant to do, at first, but he thought he could talk her into accepting it. He'd talked her into things before, including the idea of marrying him a few weeks from now. Carmicheal smiled. It shouldn't be too difficult ...

	"Stop dreaming!" Evelyn snapped. "And watch where we're going—"

	She broke off as the creep gave a sickening lurch over the lip of a crevice and hung there with its forward set of treads spinning madly in air. Carmicheal felt it teeter forward and flung his weight backwards to compensate, simultaneously slapping the rear treads into reverse. The treads scrabbled at the frozen ground for a heart-stopping second, caught, and dragged the creep back to safety. He moved it forward again, parallelling the black shadow that was the crevice.

	Neat, he thought, complimenting himself wryly. His reflexes were •rill fast; he still had the lightning responses of the trained Spaceman. The trained Spaceman ...

	The old bitterness arose in him again as he thought of that training. All six years of it. Besides the awful grind of attaining proficiency in the specialities necessary for ship control and maintenance, there was the sheer torture of the physical and psychological training as well. One designed to make bodily movements at least three times faster and more accurately controlled than normal, and the other to make desirable an environment that would drive a person without that training quite mad if he were exposed to it for any length of time. And when it was all finished, an old fogey—who seemed to operate on ninety per cent intuition—told you whether you'd passed or not. Altogether it was a murderous and a fantastically costly process. Almost as costly as the price of a single interstellar trip.

	And all for what?

-

	Carmicheal glared into the howling darkness. Ghostly and distorted, the reflection of his own face in the plastic canopy glared back. He'd had three years as Number Two on the Starling—a small passenger boat operating in one of the Central sectors, where stellar distances were small and travelling cost a relatively small fortune. He'd been as happy in his job as anyone could ever hope to be. Then one day the Starling's captain had been asked to take some subsidy equipment to the colony world of Helena, on the galactic rim. The trip—Government paid for, of course—would net the ship's company so much money that the Captain had nearly bitten off the official's head saying 'yes'.

	They'd all been warned about these 'frontier' planets, of course. But Carmicheal, after a brief look around, had decided that the colonists were a harmless, self-satisfied bunch. That was until he'd been very scientifically knocked on the head and locked in a windowless room until the diminishing thunder of the Starling's take-off told him that it had gone without its Number Two.

	Second Citizen Prescott—Evelyn's father and chief administrator of Helena—explained what must have happened to him after he'd been released. Someone—it must have been a higher-up member of the Sundberg mob, to have the necessary technical qualifications—had told a very convincing story of Carmicheal's death or disablement to the Starling's Captain, and offered himself as a replacement. Probably, Prescott had told him, the agent had picked up some important information discovered by Helena's research teams and wanted to get it back to his boss quickly, or to some planet where he could retail it himself, before the Helena administration could report and be credited through the proper channels with its discovery. Anyway, there was nothing Carmicheal could do to rectify matters. Even supposing he could afford the cost of sending a message to his employers—a message carried through sub-space by ship because of the snail-like pace of light and radio waves—he knew that it would be ten times cheaper for them to train another man than to send a ship out after Carmicheal. He would just have to resign himself, Prescott had told him, to remaining on Helena as a colonist.

	And he had resigned himself. Eventually—after a fashion—he had even adapted to the vile climatic conditions, the awful, empty black that was the night sky, and the sheer drudgery of his work. His technical skills were a big help in coordinating research, and the psychological training that kept him on good terms with crew and passengers during interstellar trips were also invaluable. In personal relations and in delicate problems of administration he'd been hard to beat, and everybody liked him. He'd gone up fast. He still thought about his life on the Starling, and about the crowded sky of the Centre, but these thoughts no longer kept him awake all night. At least, not very often.

	Now he was expected to take the Second Citizen's post when Prescott relinquished it, and he was going to marry the Second Citizen's daughter.

	Carmicheal was an unqualified success on Helena, but that success was making him more and more doubtful of the Second Citizen's original story. That explanation now seemed a little too pat. Could it be that the colony had needed someone with Carmicheal's qualifications? And had it been Prescott's man instead of Sundberg's who'd knocked him on the head? He'd probably never find out.

	Still, he thought bitterly, apart from breaking his heart and ruining his life, they'd treated him very well.

-

	A low moan from Carlsen brought him out of his deepening mood of self-pity. The C-man had been muttering feverishly for some time, but rarely loud enough for Carmicheal to make anything out of it. He glanced sideways, and felt an unreasoning rush of anger.

	"What's he gabbling about now?" he snapped.

	It was silly. He knew that Evelyn had to hold Carlsen to keep him from bouncing against the inside of the creep. But she shouldn't hold him like that, or look at him like that ...

	"Something about canvas," she said quietly, without taking her eyes off Carlsen. "And fists, and needles. And something about finishing a walk. A whole lot about finishing a walk. What does that mean?"

	"It's his name for——-"

	The creep chose that instant to ram a small boulder. Carmicheal's jaw shut with an audible click and tears popped into his eyes as he bit his tongue. He remained angrily silent until the darker shadow of the unfinished weather control station loomed up in front of them.

	The power line running to the living quarters of the station hadn't been disconnected since its abandonment through lack of funds two years ago. There was heat and light—and the C-man was made comfortable—within a few minutes. It was a desolate spot, but to make sure that nobody would get curious Carmicheal covered all the windows. Then, with his spirits soaring as he thought of the untold wealth and freedom that would soon be his, he started the creep on its trip to the city for the radiation specialist and the Second Citizen.

	He was on the way less than five minutes when a low murmuring drifted down to him out of the sky. He slapped on the brakes and sat gripping the wheel as if trying to twist it out of shape. The murmur grew to a screaming, bone-jarring thunder, and then abruptly died. The sound was unmistakable; just on the other side of town, another C-ship had landed!

	Strangely, he had no feelings about it at first. His mind was empty, blank—except for the little voice that chortled, How does it feel to be poor again? and began to laugh. After a while Carmicheal thought he saw the funny side of it, too, so he joined in.

	Abruptly he got a grip on himself. There was a place for people who laughed the way he'd just been doing. Viciously he sent the creep bouncing at near-suicidal speed in the direction of town. He might make something out of this yet, providing he kept his head.

	Two hours later Carmicheal was back at the station again, fidgeting outside the room where the C-man was being examined by the doctor. Evelyn was in there too. Evelyn, Carmicheal thought angrily, was sticking to Carlsen like glue, and the way she fussed over him was sickening. He was going to have some hard things to say to her when this was all over.

	On a chair at the other end of the room Second Citizen Prescott sat staring at the floor. His expression was unreadable, and he hadn't spoken a word to anyone since leaving town. When Carmicheal had told him his story about Carlsen, Prescott had merely said that he'd just been visited by two men from the other C-ship, and that there was something about this whole affair which stank, so he wasn't going to discuss it with anyone until he'd thrashed it out with Carlsen. Now, they were waiting for the doctor they had brought with them from town to report.

-

IV

	The door opened and closed silently, and Dr. MacIntyre was in the room. He was tall, thin and tired-looking—the latter a condition common with Helena's colonists—and he was beginning to need a shave. He said quietly, "We haven't the resources to effect a cure here on Helena—this is only a D-stage colony. He'll have to go to a more advanced colony, or to one of the Central systems." He paused. When he went on his voice was cold, objective, but the look in his eyes betrayed his true feelings. "But in his condition he couldn't pilot a tricycle, much less a C-ship. I'm afraid he's just out of luck."

	He added then: "He's bad, but conscious, if you want to talk to him."

	As they entered the room the Second Citizen's eyes flicked about the tiny compartment, missing nothing. They rested for a moment on his daughter sitting by the bedside then focussed sharply on Carlsen. Knowing how the colonists felt towards C-men, Carmicheal expected him to make some crack, or to crow a little over the other's predicament, at least. He didn't, but got down to business right away.

	"Mr. Carlsen," he said coldly, "your position has been explained to me by Carmicheal here, but in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I'll re-state it.

	"At one of your previous call-points you were injured, and on touching down here you found that you could not proceed with your journey without medical attention. In exchange for this attention you are going to reward Mr. Carmicheal—and the colony, too, I hope— generously."

	Prescott paused, and there was brittle quality to his tone as he went on : "Now, normally I would take the word of a C-man. But I now have reason to believe that you are no longer one of those. The fact of your demanding fuel instead of credits makes my suspicion practically a certainty.

	"You're a renegade, Carlsen. You've decided to start up in the business for yourself."

	The Second Citizen's voice was still coldly impersonal as he continued, but that was only because he was working hard to keep it that way.

	"Two hours ago another C-ship landed, and two men came to see me. Both were extremely well armed, and in true C-man fashion they informed me first thing that there was another man on their ship all set to blow my city off the face of the planet if anything should happen to them. One was in coveralls, the other wore a black and silver uniform, and was called 'Inspector' several times by the first one. The uniformed one had some very searching questions to ask about you—like how you sounded over our sets, did you seem to be wounded, and what form of payment you'd asked for. Then they returned to their ship.

	"Those men want you badly, Carlsen; and whether you're alive or not doesn't seem to matter to them at all. They think you're on your ship, so at the moment they're probably busy planning ways to open up or destroy that ship. But since talking to them I've found out that you aren't on your ship—though you've got it pretty thoroughly booby-trapped, according to Carmicheal here. Now ..." Prescott's voice began to shake a little, and his lips, Carmicheal saw, were practically white. As he went on he looked almost as sick as the man he was talking to. "... at any moment your superiors will start flinging missiles at your ship, and that ship is set to go up—taking half the country with it—at the first touch. Sixty per cent of this world's population is in the area of total destruction, the capital city. What in blazes made you pick this colony to land on? What did I ever do to you to deserve this ...?"

	Carmicheal fought to keep a wide grin from breaking out all over his face as Prescott's tirade continued. What incredible luck! Carmicheal had been a bit worried over the desertion of Carlsen and the theft of the other's ship. But now that C-man Carlsen had turned out to be a thief, too, that changed things. In a manner of speaking, the C-ship was now public property.

	And Carmicheal was the only person apart from Carlsen who knew that the C-ship wasn't booby-trapped. If he played this situation right, he thought with growing relief and self-satisfaction, he could be quite a hero to the colony—instead of just another thief and deserter like Carlsen. The plan might mean leaving Evelyn behind, though, until he disposed of the C-ship and its payload and had the credits to return for her. He couldn't risk telling her the truth right now. With this mother-hen complex she was getting over the injured Carlsen, she'd probably blow the works to her father and spoil the whole thing. But telling Evelyn was a mere detail; it could be settled later.

	One decision he did make as he listened to the Second Citizen ranting at Carlsen. He would do everything possible to take the injured man with him, and to leave him off at a planet where his burns could be attended to properly. Us crooks, he thought wryly, ought to stick together.

-

V

	Prescott, without a perceptible pause for breath or waiting on a reply from Carlsen, switched his attention to the Doctor.

	"MacIntyre! Can't you do anything? Give him a shot or something, so he can take that ship away from here? I don't care what happens to him later. You've got to realise," Prescott urged desperately, "that one man's life is nothing when there's a ship-load of fusion bombs ready to flatten the whole colony—"

	"Father!"

	Evelyn was shocked at her father's cold-blooded suggestion. Hastily she began reassuring the injured C-man, but Carlsen waved her weakly away.

	"Never mind," he said; then to Prescott and the Doctor: "That is exactly what I want—something to let me finish this trip. If you can give me a shot that will do that—and the fuel I need—that is all I want. And you'll be compensated, too—-"

	"Don't give me that," Prescott interrupted with angry impatience. "You aren't going to finish any trip, and you have no intention of compensating us. You want fuel instead of credits solely to make a getaway to someplace where you can sell your stolen tapes in safety.

	"But we would give you the fuel anyway, just to be rid of you and your ship—"

	"Let's get this straight," Carlsen said tiredly. He didn't put any special emphasis on his words—as if, Carmicheal thought, he was far too short of breath to waste it in stressing syllables. "Firstly, I'm a C-man, and still working at it—not a renegade or deserter or mobster of any kind. Therefore, if you do as I say and I get out of this alive, you will be paid. Secondly, the men in the other C-ship are not my superiors. They are Sundberg men trying to stop me for a reason which I cannot disclose to you.

	"C-men never travel three to a ship, and Inspectors don't wear uniform. But I can't expect a colonist to know that, so telling you that doesn't prove anything. However, whether you believe it or not," Carlsen ended soberly, "those men are fakes."

	For perhaps a second after Carlsen had finished talking Carmicheal felt distinctly uneasy. Could the other be really telling the truth? But the feeling changed quickly to one of surprised admiration; the story sounded so sober and convincing. What an actor Carlsen was.

	But if Carmicheal was going to work himself into the position of the colony's saviour and all-round bright-eyed boy, he'd better start laying some preliminary ground-work. First he would have to side with Carlsen to gain the C-man's confidence, then ... He cleared his throat and diffidently addressed Prescott.

	"He could be telling the truth, you know. On the Central worlds they don't think of C-men the way we do, and I used to know a couple of them quite well. They didn't wear uniform—"

	"Whether he is or isn't telling the truth is unimportant," the Second Citizen broke in harshly. All I'm concerned with is getting that ship away from my capital city." He turned to the Doctor. "A minute ago I asked if you could give him a shot or something ...?"

	"The answer is no," MacIntyre said. He went on to explain just why the answer was no, and became very technical about it. For a while the air was thick with medical poly-syllables—but it was obvious hat Evelyn was the only one present who understood what it was all about. Carmicheal saw the pain and anxiety grow in her face as the Doctor talked, and the look of aching helplessness she gave Carlsen— which Carlsen didn't see.

	Something seemed to twist inside Carmicheal, painfully. He was abruptly surprised to find that he was clenching his teeth.

	Why, he thought, more shocked than angry, she's falling in love with the guy!

	Into the emptiness that the realisation brought to his mind, the mocking, derisive voice he knew so well began to speak: You're not her big, brave ex-Spaceman any more, it sneered. You're not the only one on the planet who's been to strange, far places and done great things. This one lives with danger and excitement like they were a second skin. He's got you outclassed, Carmicheal. And another thing, it ended cuttingly, he isn't an old man like you—

	But I'm only thirty-eight!

	And she's nineteen.

	Carmicheal shook himself sharply; if he wasn't careful he'd start talking to himself—out loud. It was time he started his plan moving for the taking of the C-ship before Carlsen's hunters got around to attacking it.

	Carmicheal cleared his throat. Since MacIntyre had stopped talking there had been silence in the room. He addressed Prescott :

	"I could take that ship up—under Carlsen's direction, of course. I used to be a pilot, you know. If we took her up into an orbit, the city would be safe even if the ship did explode ..."

	Carmicheal, watching the furrows on Prescott's brow smooth themselves out and the sheer relief that flooded his face, felt like a very low form of life indeed—even his fellow worms would have called him a heel. He'd had Prescott scared stiff over a danger that didn't exist. But Carlsen spoke before the Second Citizen could answer.

	"That's impossible. You may have been a pilot, but the controls on a starship are completely different from the interplanetary jobs you were used to. It takes special training—"

	"Carmicheal is a starman."

	It was Evelyn. The way she said the words should have made Carmicheal feel proud, but instead he felt lower than ever.

	Carlsen's eyes were boring in at him suddenly. This is it, Carmicheal thought. Carlsen wasn't a dope; he must now be beginning to suspect Carmicheal's true purpose. The information that Carmicheal was an interstellar pilot—or had been—was a dead giveaway.

	Here it came.

	"A starman, eh. I didn't know that." A pause, then: "You noticed the set-up on the Ordnance panel when you were in my control room then? And the way the ship is booby-trapped?"

	His eyes were practically digging holes in Carmicheal, and Carlsen couldn't keep the agony of uncertainty he was undergoing from showing just a little in them.

	"I took particular notice of the Ordnance panel," Carmicheal replied. "So I know how efficiently the ship is booby-trapped." Sheer exultation gave his voice a strange hoarseness, and he fought desperately to keep from grinning like a satisfied cat. He was going to be so rich.

	Speaking quietly, Carlsen used a few very dirty words, then hid his face in the pillows.

	MacIntyre gasped. Evelyn, still more puzzled than shocked, gaped at the back of Carlsen's head. Her father, after holding a sharply-indrawn breath for the space of three seconds, used it to say chidingly: "There was no need for that, Mr. Carlsen. I can't understand your attitude. But some allowances must be made, I suppose, for your injuries and the pain you are suffering. I just can't believe that you would refuse to do this thing for us." Prescott's voice became pleading as he went on: "No matter what sort of man you are now, you can't have sunk so low that you'd allow a whole colony to be blown to pieces without trying to stop it.

	"You've heard Dr. MacIntyre, so I'll not mince matters. We are unable to treat you here," he stated grimly, "so if you stay here you'll die anyway. But if you don't take that outsize bomb you call a ship away, we're all going to die—you included. You've nothing to lose that you aren't going to lose anyway."

	Carlsen kept stubbornly silent.

	"Carmicheal here has offered to take up the ship under your direction," Prescott continued. "He will be your hands. Not being a spaceman I don't know what his chances of success are, but if he is willing to make a sacrifice, why won't you ...?"

	Oh, stop it! Carmicheal cried silently. Wasn't it bad enough to be a louse, without having to stand by and listen to people calling you a hero? His face had been hot since Carlsen had used those four-letter Anglo-Saxon words to him, but now he felt that his blush was radiating deep into the infra-red. He couldn't meet anybody's eyes—and especially not Evelyn's. As Prescott continued talking he kept his fixed on the floor.

-

	All at once Carmicheal felt very sorry for Carlsen. The other was in a dilemma. He couldn't tell Prescott the truth—that the C-ship wasn't booby-trapped—because the Second Citizen would straightaway have handed Carlsen over to his superiors and washed his hands of the whole business. The only thing that stopped Prescott from doing that anyway was the belief that if he did, the Inspector would walk off with his prisoner and just leave the booby-trapped ship on the planet, thus causing the colonists an unguessable number of sleepless nights until it blew up and put them to sleep for good. Carmicheal didn't think the C-men would do a thing like that, but Prescott had the insular ideas of a colonist, and wouldn't put anything past the C-men.

	If the Second Citizen finds out that I'm lying and that this cold sweat he's working himself into is totally unnecessary, Carmicheal thought with a shiver of pure dread, he'll just start by skinning me alive ...

	That was a risk, of course, But what really puzzled Carmicheal was, why didn't Carlsen just tell all and give himself up to the Inspector? Carmicheal didn't know how C-men punished each other's lapses from virtue, but surely they wouldn't just execute him out of hand. They'd at least take him for proper medical attention before trying him.

	That was, Carmicheal reminded himself, if he was merely guilty of desertion and theft of a C-ship. Maybe Carlsen had done other things as well. They must have been very bad to make him so frightened of giving himself up. But Carmicheal still felt pity for him.

	"Carlsen!" he said loudly, over the words of the still-pleading Second Citizen. "I was Number Two on a passenger boat. I can take you to a place where you'll get proper treatment, where you'll live—"

	"Oh, could you?" Evelyn burst out. She dropped her eyes then, colouring.

	Watching her Carmicheal felt a smothering ache grow in his chest. Prescott had been doing quite a job of pleading a case for the last few minutes, but he could have taken lessons from his daughter—and she was asking for just one life, not the lives of the whole colony. By rights he should dump Carlsen in space, Carmicheal thought angrily. After disposing of the C-ship he would have enough money to return for Evelyn and take her away from this place, and to take her to any of the places she had ever wanted to see. She would soon forget Carlsen then. Or would she? She'd never acted that way towards him? Carmicheal knew. She'd treated him more like a ...

	He brought his attention back sharply as Carlsen turned his head and said, "I don't believe you."

	The voice was flat, despairing, but was that a flicker of something like hope that Carmicheal caught in the other's eyes? Quickly, and making it sound as sincere as he could, he said, "I'll see that you get to a proper hospital. I promise you that."

	"Sure he will," Evelyn backed him up. "You'll be better in no time."

	Carlsen's eyes flicked towards Evelyn. For the first time since leaving the ship he really looked at her. He blinked—obviously liking the view—and almost managed a smile, but the realisation of his position forced his lips into a grim, tight line. He said, switching his attention to Carmicheal, "You might at that. But I know what you really want. Well, you're welcome to it, if you take me to a certain place first. It's very important I get there with something. After that you can do anything you like with the ... the ..." His voice died, his head rolled from side to side of the pillow and he began to babble deliriously. Carmicheal leaned forward to listen.

	"What's going on here?" Prescott asked sharply, suddenly suspicious. "Are you planning to steal his ship?"

	"You want rid of it, don't you?" Carmicheal said brusquely. He waved Prescott to be silent.

	Carlsen was muttering about canvas bags and needles again, then suddenly his voice rose. "He's a pilot," he mumbled, and gave a little laugh. "Let 'im think what he likes. You gotta finish the walk. 'S important. 'S mos' important things you ever did." The voice blurred, then cleared again. "If Sunberg gets his hands on you it'll be jus' too bad. Innerstellar wars cost too much ... But not any more ..."

-

VI

	At that point, before Carmicheal could stop him, Dr. MacIntyre quickly slid a hypo into Carlsen's upper arm and depressed the plunger. Carlsen grew quiet, and about a minute later opened his eyes. Apparently without remembering his brief lapse into delirium, he said distinctly: "All right. I agree to have Carmicheal take the ship up— but there's one condition. I must be fully conscious during the takeoff and the subsequent trip."

	He paused briefly, gathering breath for the explanation, then went on: "Carmicheal's know-how is several years out of date; he'll need constant supervision if he's not to blow the ship up by accident. If you can't at least guarantee to keep me awake, the answer is no."

	That, thought Carmicheal with wry admiration, was a good story for someone who wasn't a spaceman. Carlsen just didn't trust his word, and probably expected to be dumped into space—or sub-space— a few hours after take-off. A suspicious type, this Carlsen. No ; Carmicheal didn't believe that ship operation could change so drastically in six years.

	But just suppose spaceship design and control systems had changed, and suppose Carlsen was a bona-fide C-man, where did that put Carmicheal? Answer; in exactly the same place. He was going to take out that ship, and whether he stole it first or second hand didn't matter —he was putting as many light centuries as possible between himself and this stinking colony as quickly as he could, and blow the risks. But Carlsen couldn't be a C-man, he knew. That gambit of demanding to be kept awake proved it. While the other was conscious there was-still a hope—no matter how faint—of taking the ship away from Carmicheal again. The thieves were merely manoeuvring for a better crack at the spoils. That was the explanation.

-

	The voice of MacIntyre replying to Carlsen forced the nagging doubt he felt about it temporarily into the back of his mind.

	The Doctor was saying, "... I can give you something to keep you awake and clear-headed, but it's tricky stuff to administer, and dangerous. The timing and quantity used in the shots has to be just right. Carmicheal doesn't know the technique, and you'd be too weak to do it even if you did know how ..." MacIntyre's voice trailed off, and he looked questioningly at Prescott. There was another silence. Evelyn broke it gently.

	"I know the stuff you mean," she said quietly. "It's ..."—she used a word with an unusually large number of syllables—"… isn't it?" Then she dropped her bombshell. "I can administer it. I'll go along with them on the trip—"

	Prescott got his "No!" in a split second before Carmicheal's and proceeded to give reasons for his refusal to consider the idea—angrily and at the top of his voice. He had reasons too—beside the actually physical danger to Evelyn, he didn't want her complicating things when the time came to leave Carlsen. But some of the Second Citizen's reasons were making Carmicheal see red. Without bothering to be tactful about it he called Carmicheal as big a crook as Carlsen, and he described the treatment she could expect from such a pair of blackguards ...

	The wrong approach, Carmicheal thought. He knew just how stubborn Evelyn could be when she liked. As if reading his mind, Prescott changed his tack.

	He well knew, Prescott told her, that life on the colony sometimes, got her down, that he'd promised she would see more of the galaxy someday, take courses on some of the great University planets maybe, and see the Central Suns ... But this was the wrong way to go about it. This was too dangerous ...

	At that point Carlsen cleared his throat and said, "Maybe she just wants a cut of Carmicheal's 'opt."

	Evelyn turned. Holding Carlsen's eyes with hers, she said that she didn't want a cut of anybody's loot. Speaking quietly but very seriously she told him exactly what she did want. Carmicheal felt his face burning, and beside him Prescott squirmed in embarrassment. The things she was saying to Carlsen weren't meant for an audience—they were things people tell each other when alone, among whispering trees, in moonlight. But she was telling them to Carlsen now, as if Carmicheal, MacIntyre and her father were miles instead of feet away. He saw Carlsen's expression of shocked surprise change to one of awe mixed with something else that Carmicheal couldn't read exactly—but which he did not like.

	"You, I believe," Carlsen said quietly as she finished talking. He sounded stunned.

	Evelyn turned to her father. She stated the position and the solution like an elementary problem in logic. "If I don't go, neither does the ship. Unless you want the colony blown up, you've no choice. I think we should leave at once."

	Carmicheal gave himself a rough, mental shake. He wasn't worried about the colony blowing up, but if the second ship opened up on the first one before they could take off in it, Carlsen would be a dead duck and he a colonist for the rest of his life. Hastily he seconded the proposal.

	Prescott shook his head numbly, but before he could answer a raucous buzz from the adjoining room told of someone trying to raise the station on the communicator. He muttered, "My secretary. He's the only one who knows where I am," and stumbled out.

-

	An hour later Carmicheal was on the way back to the C-ship. Carlsen was strapped into the seat beside him, and on the floor between them was a heavy, dull-grey canister—the container for the spool of fuel wire that Carlsen had demanded from the colony on landing. The Second Citizen's creep rocked and bounced about twenty yards in their wake. Unlike Carmicheal's vehicle—which was normally used for C-ship pick-up jobs and had therefore to be unarmed—it mounted a grenade-thrower and carried a couple of light hand weapons. The armament was powered chemically, as the heavy shielding necessary for beam and nuclear weapons would have cut down the vehicle's mobility to practically nothing. But at short range, they were deadly.

	Occasionally it exchanged shots with another creep that parallelled their course just out of range on the right.

	Things had happened fast since Prescott had taken the call from his secretary. When he'd been told that the men from the other ship had come looking for him again, and that—believing Carlsen was either dead or dying aboard his ship—they intended going out to it to investigate, Prescott's opposition regarding Evelyn had dissolved completely. The secretary had also told him that the men became very angry when he refused to tell them Prescott's whereabouts, and that one of the men tried to force the information out of him until the other stopped him.

	The Second Citizen said some nasty things about there being practically no difference between C-men and Sundbergs thugs. Then, on seeing that Carlsen wouldn't budge without it, he'd sent for some of the precious atomic fuel to the storage vaults of Installation One. When Roberts, Production Engineer of One, had arrived with it, they'd piled into two of the creeps and gone racing towards Carlsen's ship.

	The race looked like being a photo finish, Carmicheal thought grimly.

	Fifty yards ahead of him something struck sparks off a flat-topped rock, skipped, and exploded against another one. A few rock chips rattled on the creep's roof. The Inspector's gunner was getting more accurate.

	In some ways Prescott was right, Carmicheal thought as he dodged around the still-smoking crater. To a colonist out here the difference between the C-men and Sundberg's hirelings was very slight, and sometimes—even though he was a bandit on an interstellar scale who blackmailed, looted, sold 'protection' and wasn't averse to a certain amount of profitable slaughter—it was often much more economical to deal with him than with he C-men.

	It was all wrong, of course, but it was the way things were. Carmicheal blamed the system of colonisation; that and the fantastically high cost of interstellar transportation which forced the peripheral colonies to use as their medium of exchange Credits based on information—either marketable news or technical data—instead of the incomparably more solid currency of the Central worlds. And when you took into consideration the tight Immigration laws of those worlds, the whole Colonial set-up was ideal for big time operators like Sundberg.

	Not that there was any fancy play or misrepresentation on the part of the Colonial Office. On the contrary, Carmicheal knew, there was neither trouble nor expense spared to ensure that a colony remained self-supporting. But so staggering was the initial cost, a Government embracing seventy-three stellar systems could only afford to set up a colony once every ten years.

	To be suitable for colonisation a planet had to have a breathable atmosphere and an adequate water supply, and whether the water spent most of the year suspended as steam in the atmosphere or frozen solid as ice didn't seem to matter much to the Government engineers— Man, with the help of machines, could live anywhere. So they came in fleets of ships, bringing with them the prefabricated parts of the most wonderful machine ever developed, and began assembling it on a foundation that would last for centuries. ■

	Installation Number One—or as they preferred to call it on Helena, The First Citizen—did everything. A power pile, metal refinery, factory and chemical plant all combined on a not-so-small scale, it enabled the colonists to make houses and machines, supplied power and spare components for those houses and machines, and kept the users fed on concentrates until normal food could be grown. As a byproduct it gave a steady trickle of the fantastically expensive atomic fuel, a gram of which could power a piece of heavy machinery practically for ever, but which the interstellar ships used at such a prodigiously wasteful rate. When the engineers left it the colony was self-supporting; nobody would starve, and few would take sick. But it wasn't a comfortable existence. If you wanted luxury, you had to work, and work. Sometimes, then, you got it.

	There were no luxuries on Helena, Carmicheal thought grimly as an icy blast rocked his creep. For easy living you had to have a large population. But you couldn't attract people with the weather conditions on Helena—sub-temperate in Summer and sub-zero in Winter. And while the Government paid the transportation costs for anyone volunteering for the colonies, it wouldn't allow any misrepresentation about that person's eventual destination—the colonist knew exactly what to expect on arrival. Carmicheal was surprised at anyone coming to Helena in the first place, but he supposed there was a certain kick to be had out of opening up a new world.

	The answer was, of course, to change the weather. But Weather Control installations were not supplied free by the Colonial Office to planets like Helena. They had to be worked for, and their cost of transportation paid, by the colonists themselves; the Office had, after all, spent more than enough on them. Even so, Helena had almost built up enough credit by its sale of fuel to occasional spaceships and data and discoveries by its research teams to send for weather control machinery. But the research groups had struck a bad patch, morale had been affected, and the credit reserve had been steadily eaten away by the colonists' demands for general coverage news tapes from their home sectors—and homesickness, in a colonist, was a very bad sign. So the beautiful dream of Weather Control for Helena, with its attendent increase in status and population, faded gradually away.

-

VII

	Prescott had nearly killed himself with his efforts at stopping the rot, Carmicheal knew. Even yet the Second Citizen hadn't given up hope. When a Sundberg ship touched down at the capital's spaceport, offering high-jacked data spools and cut-price news tapes, there was no trade. But when a C-man came swaggering and bullying down in his invincible ship, Prescott reported the current findings of his research teams, paid for any news or data that might be of help to them, and kept his feelings about the whole thing to himself—at least, until the C-man had gone.

	Helena was taking part in a galaxy-wide investigation into longevity, and another into the possible damping out of pre-Nova fluctuations in G-type stars. Most low-stage colonies did similar work—it kept minds busy that might otherwise have turned to plotting mischief— and besides, there was always the possibility that, far from the influence of contemporary thought in the Centre, someone in the isolation of the Rim would come up with something new and different. It had happened once or twice, with fame and fortune for the colonies concerned, but there were never spectacular results in astronomical or longevity research—merely the elimination of dead ends. The Government research centre paid for negative results too, though, but at a very low rate. Helena, therefore, was poor ...

	Carmicheal's mind was jolted back to the present by an explosion that rolled the creep up onto its starboard treads. He was sure it was going to capsize, but it hung balanced for what seemed like years, then crashed back upright and began running around in tight circles. He got it straightened out, but the explosion had damaged the port treads. It kept slewing off course all the time.

	He glanced at Carlsen. The other had his eyes closed, even though MacIntyre's shots were keeping him fully conscious and relatively pain-free. Probably didn't care for the company, Carmicheal thought wryly. It surprised him when the other spoke.

	"What are you going to do with my ship when you take it?" he asked.

	Carmicheal licked his lips. He checked to make sure the communicator connecting them with Prescott's creep was switched off before replying.

	When he'd finished Carlsen said thoughtfully, "So you really meant that about taking me to a hospital. You must be crooked through circumstances instead of by inclination ..." He paused, and Carmicheal had the uncomfortable feeling that Carlsen was laughing at him as he went on. "You can only sell the data and news tapes on planets where Sundberg has at least partial control. No other colony will have anything to do with you, no matter how low you cut your prices. And if you do land only on Sundberg-controlled worlds, you won't last long. Sundberg's boys are smart. You'll be outbluffed, and you'll lose everything, including your life and the life of Miss Prescott, if you're stupid enough to drag her along ..."

	Carmicheal felt his face getting hot again. He didn't want to think of Evelyn much less talk about her to Carlsen. Carlsen was a crook; a smooth-talking, plausible crook who could out-act professionals. At the moment he doubtless had a story all ready, a story that would explain everything beautifully.

	Carmicheal thought of that other armed creep racing them to the ship. He wouldn't believe any story.

	"... You've got to believe this much, at least," Carlsen was saying, and the sincerity fairly throbbed in his voice. "If you take me to the place I want to go, I really will give you the ship—free, with no strings attached. This is an unheard of thing for a C-man to do, but I think the circumstances in this case will allow it. However, I think I'd better give you the whole story ..."

	Once upon a time, said the little voice in Carmicheal's head sardonically, there was a brave spaceman called Carlsen ...

-

	There were three more near misses during the time Carlsen told his story. Their creep was a battered wreck that threatened to come apart any minute, but Carmicheal barely noticed the pounding it was taking. It was an absorbing story that Carlsen told. It had everything. It was so good that he actually wanted to believe it.

	Carmicheal cursed himself for a naive, over-impressionable idiot. Of course it was a good story; Carlsen was smooth, a real sharp man. The yarn, therefore, had been neatly tailored to fit Carmicheal's psychology. Probably if the ship went where Carlsen so eagerly wanted it to go, there would be a trap waiting that Carmicheal would be lucky to escape from alive. Carlsen, he realised, was not going to give up the ship he'd stolen so easily ...

	He forgot Carlsen momentarily as Prescott's creep overtook them. Roberts was in the turret feverishly working the grenade-thrower, but with no noticeable effect—in gunnery his status was strictly amateur. Carmicheal saw Prescott waving urgently for him to switch on his radio, then there was a flash and a roar and the floor hit him in the face.

	The creep was lying on its side and Carlsen was sprawled on top of him when Carmicheal again took an interest in his surroundings. A distinctive, sharp-smelling odour assailed his nostrils. He struggled upright and grabbed Carlsen.

	"We've got to get away from here fast," he panted as he dragged the other out through what had once been the creep's transparent roof. "This is a chemically powered job. The fuel will catch fire."

	At a safe distance Carmicheal stood up and waved at Prescott's creep. Carlsen was wearing practically nothing but his bandages, and it was cold. He pointed at the other, hugged his sides and shived elaborately, then gestured towards the C-ship standing less than half a mile away. The pantomime was meant to tell Prescott that he wanted Carlsen taken care of while he tried to make it to the C-ship on foot. Prescott, he knew, wouldn't take his own creep any nearer for fear of a stray shot hitting the supposedly booby-trapped ship.

	Carlsen said, "You'll never make it." He sounded as if he no longer cared one way or the other.

	As Prescott and MacIntyre climbed from the other creep and began picking their way towards them, Carmicheal said reassuringly to the shivering Carlsen, "They're coming. You'll be all right in a minute."

	"Why do I keep trying like this?" Carlsen asked softly, and the utter despair in his voice sent a shiver through Carmicheal colder than any caused by Helena's icy winds. "Tell me, why do I keep trying?" he repeated. He seemed to be talking to himself.

	Afraid, yet suddenly pitying, Carmicheal gave his shoulder a squeeze and repeated gruffly: "You'll be all right." Then he left.

	Scrambling over and blundering into rocks and fissures, Carmicheal made for the C-ship. But he hadn't gone far when he realised that Carlsen had been right. He would never make it, in the present conditions, at least. The trouble was it was far too dark; for all intents and purposes he was blind. There were light buttons fitted to his coveralls, of course, but they had been broken when his creep had been hit. The only illumination was the irregular orange flashes of exploding grenades and the tiny circle of light from the C-ship's control-room port half a mile away. This only served to accentuate the utter blackness of the terrain he had to cross.

	Badly shaken from his last tumble, Carmicheal pulled himself onto the top of a flat rock and tried to think. Sheer good luck had been the only thing that had kept him from breaking his neck on several occasions, and he'd only come a small fraction of the way to the C-ship. He tenderly fingered the side of his jaw where an unseen rock had removed a considerable area of skin, and tried to convince his whirling brain that the boulder he was lying on wasn't spinning and wobbling like an unbalanced top. But his brain wouldn't believe him, and neither would it furnish a solution to his problem. Stiffly he rolled over and looked back the way he had come.

	Prescott had manoeuvred his creep into a cleft between two towering piles of rock. The other creep's gunner had the range, but to get at Prescott in his present position the other would have had to first blast that rocky barrier out of the way—an impossible feat that he doggedly persisted in trying to accomplish. But Prescott's safe position made it impossible for him to return the other creep's fire. Carmicheal saw that Roberts had unshipped the grenade-thrower from its turret and was continuing to fight the brave fight from a position well away from the creep. He was scoring, Carmicheal saw ruefully, a monotonous series of wide misses.

	Suddenly there was a hissing roar and a great sheet of fire shot into the sky and was torn to shreds by the wind. The fuel from the hastily evacuated creep had decided to ignite at last. Carmicheal blinked his eyes against the unaccustomed brilliance, then caught his breath.

	He could clearly see something that Prescott, in his present sheltered position, couldn't, and that was that the other creep's steady progress towards the C-ship would in a very short time bring the Second Citizen's vehicle into line of sight of it. Prescott's present impenetrable barrier would then be bypassed—and that other creep's gunner was no amateur.

	Carmicheal saw something else. lit by the burning pyre of his wrecked creep, the way across to the C-ship showed plainly. Providing the wreck burned for long enough, he could make it.

-

	Carefully avoiding a hole of unguessable depth that his next few steps would have taken him into, he set off. It was going to be a close race, for he knew that if he didn't make it to the C-ship before Prescott's creep became a sitting target for the Inspector's gunner, Prescott, Carlsen, and Evelyn would no longer be able to complicate his plan for taking the C-ship, because they would all be dead. The thought, somehow, gave him no pleasure at all.

	The wreck did burn long enough—too long, in fact. Carmicheal was seen crossing the ground blasted clear by the C-ship's descent, and something whanged off the lock door as he pulled himself through. Another hit sent metallic echoes reverberating through the ship as the elevator shot him up to the control room. Then he was sitting at the Ordnance panel.

	Because he was using an infra-red detector, the image of the two creeps on the master screen was distorted and hazy, but the heat pictures of exploding grenades were bright, fiery flowers that seared the eye-balls. All the flowers, Carmicheal saw in a sudden sweat of anxiety, were blooming very close indeed to Prescott's vehicle. Looking long enough only to get a fix, he shot a brace of flares at the Inspector's creep, and for good measures speared it with a searchlight. He switched the screen to direct vision and lined up a heat beam. Then he stopped, thinking.

	According to Carlsen these were Sundberg men. They themselves had told Prescott they were C-men, and acted as if it were so. Before he did anything he should call them up ...

	A grenade landed within yards of Prescott's creep. There was no time. Viciously he pressed the firing stud.

	The Inspector's vehicle was racing back towards town, taking violent evasive action as it went. Carmicheal's shot—meant only to scare them into ceasing fire—came very close indeed. The creep came to a shuddering halt, its treads a mass of tangled, half-melted metal and the plastic bodywork bubbling with the reflected heat. As he watched the canopy shot open and the two men jumped out and dashed frantically for safety. The creep's fuel went up and there was no further need for flares or searchlight.

	He should pick those men off, he told himself, while they were in plain sight. It was the logical thing to do. With them out of the way the chances of pursuit when he took this ship were nil. But, he remembered, it would take them two "or three hours to make it back to their ship—that would allow plenty of time for his getaway.

	Carmicheal, said the little voice in his head, you're stupid—and as a crook you're a dead loss.

	Carmicheal shrugged angrily and began calling Prescott on the communicator.

	There was no reply.

	It might mean, of course, that Prescott's set had been damaged, and the other couldn't hear him. But again, it might not. Sweating suddenly, he switched on the ship's loud-speaker system, turned the volume 'way up, and repeated the message. He heaved a great sigh as the Second Citizen's creep lurched into motion and came towards the ship.

-

VIII

	An hour later Carmicheal was still in the control room. Prescott and MacIntyre were with him, fixing two extra seats that had been hastily ripped from their creep onto the floor. He was at the Ordnance panel, on watch. All the defensive and offensive devices which the •hip mounted were ready to go into action at the touch of a finger, but still he was anxious. He was anxious because Carlsen had told him that the other ship—the one, according to Carlsen, recently stolen by Sundberg—was of a much later design than this one, and could blow it apart if it should come to a drawn-out fight. Luckily, he'd said, the other ship didn't know this.

	Carlsen, with Evelyn in attendance, was down in the warp-drive somewhere supervising Roberts in the refuelling of the generators. Roberts was a bright lad, and his speciality made him quite familiar with refuelling techniques, but Carlsen still insisted in telling him exactly what to do and the order in which to do it, even though Roberts' methods were just as fast and efficient. Carmicheal himself had come in for some of the same treatment concerning the controls; don't do this, don't touch that. Carlsen, he thought, was carrying the pretence of a booby-trapped ship a little too far.

	Maybe, Carmicheal thought with a sudden feeling of pity, MacIntyre's shots weren't having the proper effect. Maybe his mind was going. Carlsen was a very sick man.

	With his fingers tapping nervously on the panel before him Carmicheal thought about Carlsen, and especially about the story the other had told him just before their creep had been wrecked.

	According to Carlsen, his rounds had taken him to a colony whose research team had hit the jack-pot. The discovery they'd made was the biggest thing since the development of the First Citizens, and it overshadowed even that. It was of such tremendous importance that he'd decided to skip his remaining calls and head straight for home. With all the relevant data safely taped, but before he'd had a chance to refuel, there'd been an interruption.

	Another C-ship came screaming down to land beside him. Its pilot had called him up, babbling that he'd heard the news while coming in from space, and wasn't it great! He'd also suggested that due to the extreme importance of the colony's discovery, perhaps it would be a good idea for him to escort Carlsen back with it, and how about them getting together for a while to sort of celebrate. Cautiously, Carlsen had agreed to this, though he'd stipulated that the meeting would have to take place on his own ship and that the other C-man would have to come unarmed like an ordinary colonist. After some good-natured abuse the other had agreed to this and set out for Carlsen's ship.

	As he opened the lock preparatory to letting the other in, only one thing had saved Carlsen. A mirror set inside the lock chamber was so old a trick that he'd almost forgotten that it was still there. Over-eager, the gunner in the other ship—a C-ship stolen and manned now by Sundberg men, obviously—had burned his mirror image instead of himself.

	But Carlsen hadn't escaped completely. Reflected heat and secondary radiation from the metal of the lock had burned his legs and arm, and he'd felt as though he'd been thoroughly cooked. He'd made it to the control room, however, and taken off—closely followed by the other ship. Terribly short of fuel he'd thought of Helena, remembering that it was a poor place and that he'd probably be able to bully the colonists into giving him fuel instead of credits. Unfortunately, the chronic shortage of fuel, together with his physical condition after being burned, made it impossible for him to do much ducking and dodging. He'd been unable to hide his direction of flight, and the Sundberg ship had followed him.

	This discovery which the colony had made—and which Carlsen so badly wanted to take back—was simply a modification of the existing space-warp drive which allowed faster-than-light travel. But what a modification! The way Carlsen explained it, it was the difference between punching a hole through a canvas bag with one's bare fist—a difficult feat—and the effortless sliding of a needle through the fabric of the same bag.

	When the irresistible force of a continuous nuclear explosion was confined within an area of a few cubic feet by the sheer mathernaticophilosophical witch-craft that was the space-warp generator coils, the only outlet for the tremendous energy continuously being released was by the blasting of an opening into a co-existent space-time continuum; when the opening had been made, the material products of more mental juggling in the realms of multi-dimensional geometry enabled the ship to follow the released energy through the opening, and to continue to follow it until the desired distance had been travelled. This was the principle upon which all warp-drive generators operated. Nobody could honestly say they fully understood it, but it did work.

	It was, however, ruinously wasteful of fuel.

	But that waste was now a thing of the past, Carlsen had affirmed. The colony's discovery cut out that awful outpouring of power. With their modified warp generator a starship could be powered almost as cheaply as a large atmosphere craft. And the potentialities of a really cheap means of interstellar travel were truly awe-inspiring. Why, inter-galactic travel—and colonisation—was no longer impossible!

	But the discovery must not fall into Sundberg's hands. Sundberg was a racketeer and killer on the largest possible scale—completely owning one star system and controlling three others by the extension of his 'protection' to them. In the beginning, of course, Sundberg had merely tried to sell stolen data and news tapes cheaper than the C-men—from the point of view of some of the poorer colonies, a good thing. But gradually the trading in hi-jacked tapes carried in stolen C-ships changed to outright blackmail and wholesale extortion and near-slavery. Sundberg had grown power-hungry. Rumour had it that he'd taken to strutting about his home planet wearing a crown and ermine robes—over bullet-proof armour, of course.

	If Sundberg obtained the secret of cheap interstellar flight, he would ruthlessly wipe out the colony that had made the original discovery and everyone else who knew of it, so that he alone would have it, then he would begin to extend his influence.

	It would mean the first interstellar war, Carlsen had told him solemnly. And Sundberg would win it.

-

	Remembering that story of Carlsen's, Carmicheal writhed inwardly. The pleading eyes, the weak, deadly serious voice, and the masterly use of understatement—Carlsen was good. And he'd sized up his audience perfectly. By using as bait a mechanism whose discovery was yearned for by every colonist and spaceman—especially marooned ones like Carmicheal—and then stating baldly that if Carmicheal didn't take him where he wanted to go, the other would be personally responsible for an interstellar war, Carlsen made it practically impossible for him not to grant the request. And then telling him that he would be given the ship afterwards ...

	It was a good story, but he wasn't going to believe it. This ship was his, now. There would be risks in disposing of the ship's tapes as Carlsen had said, especially if he tangled with Sundberg, but he would take them. And when the riches he would gain gave him the glorious freedom to go anywhere he liked in the galaxy, there was the matter of Evelyn ...

-

IX

	Carmicheal gripped the edge of the panel convulsively as a fiery arc climbed into the sky above the town and began to descend towards the ship. Its course and physical characteristics had been automatically analysed during the first second of its appearance, so the ship's force-screen didn't go on ... It exploded a mile to one side of them; a relatively harmless missile with a chemical warhead.

	They were merely trying to get some kind of reaction from him, Carmicheal guessed, and out of consideration for the townspeople they hadn't used atomics. C-men, he knew, were usually considerate where innocent bystanders were concerned. But that shot had told him something else. The two men whose creep he melted must have had personal radios, and called for the third of the trio to send transport for them. Otherwise they'd never have reached their ship in an hour.

	Carmicheal cursed. The three hours which he'd allowed would have been more than adequate for the get-away, but he'd stupidly forgotten the possibility of the men getting back to their ship on anything but their feet. He should have burned them down when he had the chance. He was too soft, too chicken hearted. And now the battle was starting, and him with a ship that was unfamiliar, and nearly obsolete as well. He glared helplessly at the panel before him. Was this how it was going to end ...?

	He jumped as a hand touched his shoulder. It was Prescott.

	"Carmicheal," the Second Citizen said quietly, but urgently. "I know what you intend, and while I don't like it I can understand how you must feel. With your training and conditioning, being barred from space must have nearly killed you, though you managed to hide the fact from most of us. But there's something you must know.

	"In the mad rush to the ship here there was no time to tell you, but when my secretary was speaking to me he reported some suspicious behaviour by one of the Inspector's men. The man was trying to sell news tapes, at quarter the usual price. His companions didn't know about it—obviously he was trying for a quick, personal profit." Prescott paused, then said thickly, "You know what that proves. Those are not C-men."

	"Meaning, I suppose," Carmicheal ended for him, "that Carlsen is a C-man."

	But that wasn't necessarily so, Carmicheal told himself desperately. Carlsen could quite easily be a Sundberg man himself who wanted to be free of his companions in crime, and taken a shipload of tapes when he'd run out to ensure his not starving in his old age. His companions would naturally have objected to all this and, after failing in their attempt to kill him, they would have come after him looking for blood. And the value of the ship and cargo would make them extremely reluctant to destroy it out of hand.

	That was the explanation, Carmicheal told himself determinedly ; it figured. Nothing was going to make him give up this ship. Nothing. Why, he thought, and felt suddenly frightened, if Carlsen really was a C-man—instead of a renegade who'd gone over to Sundberg and now wanted to be free of him—then his story of the new interstellar drive might be true. And everything else he'd said ... Carmicheal shook his head desperately. It wasn't true. It wasn't.

	"Carmicheal! What's the matter with you?" Prescott snapped ; then: "Listen to me. Like everybody else here, I don't like C-men. But I try to take the long view; I know that they're a necessary evil at present, and will continue to be until transportation costs come down." His fingers seized Carmicheal's arm, and obviously unaware of the pressure he was exerting, urged, "You've got to help him finish his Walk, Carmicheal. I know he threatened to blow up the colony, but I still say you've got to do as he tells you. He might be carrying something important, and besides, you'll get the whole colony into trouble."

	"Shut up!" He tore the other's grip away from his arm. "Leave me alone!"

	"Listen," Prescott said angrily. "Don't let the fact that he's taken your girl away from you blind you to everything but revenge. Don't be stup—"

	Prescott broke off in mid-word, his eyes widening. The direct vision panel showed three fiery streamers climbing into the sky above the city. Half a mile from the ship there were three sharp, evenly spaced explosions. Chemical stuff, still, but the other ship was growing impatient.

	The silence was broken by the tired voice of Carlsen.

	"You'd better take your men and leave now, Mr. Prescott," he said as Roberts and Evelyn set his stretcher down. "Keep this ship between you and the other one for shelter, and go as far and as fast as you can. They might just start throwing atomics before we can take off ..." Carlsen went on to say a few words to MacIntyre as the doctor strapped him into the newly-rigged seat. Prescott began talking to Evelyn, saying anxious, fatherly, personal things. Carmicheal went to the pilot's couch and began strapping in; he didn't want to hear them.

-

	Ten minutes later, when the creep carrying Prescott and Roberts was clear of the ship, Carlsen said, "We'll warm up the drive pile for the engines first. Do exactly as I tell you ..." There followed several seconds of highly-technical instructions, then, "... And switch on the force screen so's we won't tip them off that we're leaving by allowing them to detect increased pile activity—at least, until our tail-glow begins to show."

	Then it would have to be shut off, of course. If the planetary drive was used inside the force-screen, the ship would melt in the heat of the confined exhaust gases.

	Fuming, Carmicheal did what he was told, exactly.

	"That trick will give us a few minutes start," Carlsen went on. "But they're bound to send some stuff after us before they take off themselves. Do you think you could take this boat directly above them before we gain too much altitude, then climb straight up giving them the benefit of our tail-wash? It won't hurt them, but the radioactivity will interfere with the self-guiding circuits in their missiles."

	Carmicheal asked fast, pertinent questions about the area, shape, and aerodynamic behaviour characteristics of the ship's stabilisers in atmosphere. Then he said yes.

	While he was talking two missiles exploded against the screen. The computor said they would have been direct hits.

	A ghostly blue glow spread out from the base of the ship; ionisation from the planetary drive tubes. The ship was ready to go. Carlsen nodded, and in the same instant Carmicheal flicked off the screen and undamped the pile, then acceleration was making his softly-upholstered couch feel like solid rock.

	Carmicheal angled his screaming, thundering, beautiful beast out over the city, straightening her up again when the foreshortened image of the other C-ship was below. Missiles shot up in his wake, but the fiery, radio-active exhaust fanning out from his tail played hob with their guiding and fusing mechanisms. They went snaking off crazily in all directions. One almost landed on the ship that had sent it. After that the missiles stopped coming.

	There would be no further trouble until both ships were in space.

	Carmicheal relaxed, letting the sheer exhilaration of being in a climbing ship again charge every cell in his body. Automatically he made a quick visual check of the instruments, and saw the single light burning on the Communications panel. He indicated it with a nod and said, "Carlsen ! You forgot to give Prescott his receipt."

	"Sign off for me," Carlsen  said. He sounded very, very tired.

	Carmicheal knew the formula—he'd heard lots of C-men sign off after a delivery—but he'd never been on this end of the line before. His mouth dried up suddenly and he felt his chest swell with an emotion that he hadn't experienced since he was a kid. He cleared his throat noisily and energised the microphone.

	"This is Courier 4962 Carlsen , Walk 17C, Rim Sector Twelve. Five General News tapes and three Research Centre data tapes have been delivered intact to the colony Helena. Delivery has been accepted and the Postage Dues have been paid ..."

-

X

	A Courier was something special, Carmicheal thought as he finished signing off and the recorder man on Helena sent acknowledgement. When a Postman's delivery • route—or Walk—took him all over a galactic sector, he had to be. But Couriers were not quite unique in history. Their legendary predecessors, the ancient Pony Expressmen of Earth, had also had to fight to deliver mail, though they'd never had the same trouble as the C-men in levying postage charges on the recipient. Besides having the ability to navigate and fight their incredibly valuable ships, they had to be strict—even brutal at times—in dealing with some of the people they served; after all, if they hadn't insisted on a certain surplus of fuel and credits being available at all times, C-ships would have become marooned on out-of-the-way colonies and their service would have collapsed. Out here on the impoverished Rim worlds, they were hated like poison. But it wasn't like that in the Centre. There a C-man was a hero, a member of a communications service that kept interstellar civilisation from falling apart into a thousand separate, mutually hostile pieces, and something every bright-eyed youngster longed passionately to become. There a person felt proud to help a C-man ...

	But what was he feeling so proud for? Carmicheal swore silently in sheer self-disgust. This was no C-man—at least, not any more. He was a renegade; a smooth-talking plausible crook who might even yet get the better of Carmicheal, and Carmicheal had better not forget that ...

	"Carmicheal," Carlsen's voice broke into his thoughts. "Time to prepare the warp-drive generators. Listen carefully and, do exactly as I say—"

	"Cut that out!" Carmicheal shouted with sudden fury. "I've taken enough of it. There's no need to carry the pretence on any longer. The ship isn't booby-trapped and I know what to do without you yammering in my ear—"

	"Oh, but it is, Carmicheal," Carlsen interrupted gently. "Not the whole ship, and not in the way we told Prescott—I don't go blowing up worlds in that off-hand fashion. But if those generators aren't switched on in a certain sequence, the ship will travel in several directions at once, and in very small pieces. It's a means of protection we've just begun to use," he explained drily, "against Sundberg and other ship stealers."

-

	Carmicheal felt his hands go suddenly clammy. Shaking, he drew them quickly away from the panel where every coloured button was a ready fused bomb. Then, with a great effort, he got a grip on himself. This was, of course, another story. Carlsen was merely trying to make sure that Carmicheal would take him where he wanted to go. He gritted his teeth. Carlsen never missed a bet.

	But he did exactly as he was told anyway.

	They were in space and could now operate the warp-drive, but the other ship was hot on their tails, and it was a more up-to-date, faster ship. He daren't warp out yet, because when a ship went into sub-space it left an area of spatial strain in its wake. The strength and pattern of this strain could be analysed to give the ship's direction of flight, providing they could get to it before it smoothed itself out. And they could do that all right, Carmicheal knew with a sick certainty; they were practically breathing down his neck. Without turning, he called Carlsen.

	"He's out again," Evelyn answered thickly. Acceleration kept her pressed relentlessly into her seat, and it had never been a comfortable seat even when fitted to her father's creep. "Can't you cut the acceleration a bit, so's I can give him his shot?"

	"No!" he replied sharply. That would be suicide with the other ship so close behind them. Then: "All right, but hurry it up." He cut acceleration to a little over one G.

	As Evelyn measured out the shot he watched the pursuing ship grow on the rear-view screen. So long as he kept it directly behind him— where his radio-active exhaust gases interfered with the guided missiles sent after him—he was relatively safe. But if it drew level ... He called to Evelyn to hurry. That ship was coming up fast.

	Suddenly they were on him. Evelyn was still standing beside Carlsen —he couldn't accelerate or she'd have been smashed against the floor.

	There was only one thing to do. He cut the drive completely and switched on the force screen.

	He was just in time. Decelerating furiously, the other ship drew level. Angry blotches on Carmicheal's force screen told where heat beams were being brought to bear. Instinctively he darkened the viewer, but the flash still nearly blinded him. A fission bomb, and the screen had handled it. They wouldn't dare try a fusion warhead at this range, Carmicheal knew; not unless they were anxious to die in the same explosion.

	The ship passed. Carmicheal cut the force-screen and re-started the drive, keeping the exhaust aimed in the direction of the other ship. The screen was good, but it operated on a similar principle to the warp-drive and was also extremely wasteful of fuel. If he kept it on for too long he wouldn't have the fuel to go anywhere at all.

	Carlsen was still out. Evelyn now knew, of course, that he intended stealing the ship; her active hostility was averted only by the fact that he'd promised to help Carlsen. Carmicheal fumed; the atmosphere in the control room was so highly charged he could almost see the sparks, and it wasn't conducive to the solving of his problem.

	There must be something he could do. He shut his eyes tightly and tried to force himself to think, but it was no good. He opened them again, and saw where the ship's present course was taking it. Remembrance came flooding back, and with it, a possible solution.

	He'd only been a year on the Starling at the time, when they'd been approached by a ship refusing to give the proper recognition signals. Obviously it was up to no good. The Starling had been unarmed, and its Captain had known that the other ship could follow him into sub-space and out again if he tried to evade contact that way. Starling had been inside a solar system at the time—just leaving one of the innermost planets. It had given the Captain an idea.

	The risks had been tremendous, Carmicheal remembered. But then, as now, the situation had called for desperate measures. He began adjusting the course.

	"What the blazes do you think you're doing?" It was Carlsen, awake again.

	Carmicheal resented the tone, though he had expected the other's surprise. In a surly voice he explained that the other ship was hanging onto them so tightly that it could chase them in and out of sub-space, and continue the battle anywhere they went. The only solution was to give them the slip by entering sub-space where the others wouldn't be able to trace their direction of flight, in a spot where there were so many space-strains that the pursuing ship would be unable to analyse theirs. He told Carlsen where that was.

	He also implied that he'd done the trick himself, instead of only watching the Starling's Captain do it. He didn't want Evelyn to be as worried as he was.

-

	Hours passed. Several times the ship following them almost caught up, but they were able to force it back by taking the offensive. It had been Carlsen's idea. Just like the other ship, they couldn't send guided missiles through their own exhaust with any accuracy. But they could short out the guiding circuits and just shoot them straight back and hope for the best. The probability of scoring a hit was extremely slight, and they were using up their store of missiles at a shockingly wasteful rate, but several times they scared the other ship into cutting its drive to switch on its force-screen. They made it keep its distance.

	Days passed, and still they made it keep its distance. 

	It grew hotter, and hotter.

	Carmicheal would have given everything he had—including the ship and its cargo—to be able to throw off his coveralls. But the other ship was close behind, and getting out of anything while under four G acceleration was an impossibility. There was water, of course, but it seemed just to run out of his pores as he drank it. He suffered, but not in silence. None of them did.

	Carlsen, after one particularly long and bitter diatribe said: "Aren't we close enough yet? By now they must be sure we're out of control, or all trying to commit suicide."

	Evelyn, her face shiny yellow and distorted by acceleration and heat, gasped: Them and me both. Fancy accelerating straight into the Sun ..."

	"Not close enough yet," Carmicheal said curtly. "In a couple of hours, maybe." He tried to blink sweat out of his eyes so as to see the control panel clearly. There was no automatic machinery that could do this job for him—it called for pure intuition as much as for manual dexterity.

	To keep the other ship from tracking them through sub-space, he had to wait until he was far enough into the area of strain surrounding the sun for their analysing instruments to be useless; then he could warp out. But at his present velocity, the time between reaching that area and approaching the sun so closely that the ship would burn like an over-eager moth was very short indeed. It was approximately two seconds.

	It became too hot to bear, and then got hotter. 

	Carmicheal tried desperately to get rid of the sweat that acceleration pressure kept collecting in his eye sockets. He had to watch everything—strain analysers, hull temperature, missile launchers, the lot—and the moisture streaming from his face was making those dials shimmer and dance like pebbles under running water. Several times the ship following almost overtook them, but when all their missiles were exhausted, Carlsen came up with the idea of throwing out any loose machinery that wasn't immediately essential. By remote control Carmicheal jettisoned everything he could jettison. The exhaust fanning out behind them partly fused and made radioactive all the miscellaneous junk, and the pursuing ship, thinking they were more atomic missiles, hurriedly switched on its force-screen and dropped behind. But not far enough behind to allow them to warp out in safety.

	And that ship could make a closer approach to the Sun than he could, Carmicheal knew. Their refrigeration units were also more up-to-date.

	It was shortly after the dumping of the loose machinery that Carlsen observed that if and when Carmicheal got out of this, his ship would be a near wreck. Carlsen deliberately stressed the fact that it was Carmicheal's ship, and the sarcasm in his tone bit like acid. If Carmicheal could have moved he would have wrung Carlsen's neck.

	It got hotter.

	Evelyn had passed out. Carmicheal was horribly afraid that he was going to do the same any minute; he'd been a lot younger the last time he'd gone through this. He was sure he was being boiled in his own body juices. While he could still see the navigation panel clearly, he decided to pre-set a course through sub-space to their destination. He hadn't thought about that much up to now.

	To Carlsen he croaked, "Where do you want to go?"—Not, he added under his breath, that I'm going to take you there, you smooth-talking, dirty son of a ...

	Carlsen said, "Illensa."

	The shock was like a blow. But strangely, when it began to pass it left not pain, but an overwhelming relief and a feeling almost of exhilaration. Consciously he made the decision that his sub-conscious had been trying to force on him since he'd first thought about stealing this ship.

	Always said you'd never make a crook, said the little voice in his head happily. Carmicheal laughed at it, and agreed.

	Beneath the name and space-warp co-ordinates of Illensa in the Almanac was a little paragraph that Carmicheal could quote almost by heart. It stated that Illensa was the Sorting Office for the Sector Twelve Postal District, and that more than two hundred Couriers were based there.

	Carlsen really was a C-man.

	Half an hour later, in the gravityless condition of sub-space, Carmicheal floated above the main control panel, thinking and remembering. The ship was comfortably cool again, and they would warp into the Illensa system in two days. Idily, he watched Evelyn give Carlsen his shot.

	For the first time the sight did not anger him, or knot his insides with frustrated jealousy. He didn't mind it at all, and he suddenly knew why.

	"Son," one of the psychologists at Advanced Space Training had once told him, "what we're doing to you is a sin and a shame. You'll be conditioned to live in and love a vacuum—the interstellar vacuum. If you try to live with or love anything or anybody else, you're going to be desperately unhappy. Unless, of course, you marry a lady Engineer ..." Carmicheal smiled at the memory. He'd been desperately unhappy on Helena, though he'd tried to make the best of it. He wasn't any more.

	Courier Carlsen, he knew, would keep his word about giving him the ship and its cargo; C-men were like that. But Carlsen was going to be very surprised when they got to Illensa and Carmicheal told him that he didn't want the ship or its cargo—that all he wanted was a chance to get his old job back. There would be a lot of pilots needed when the new and cheaper warp-drive went into use.

	The C-man looked up suddenly and met his eyes. Carlsen, Carmicheal realised, knew him much better than he knew himself. Carlsen wouldn't be surprised at all.

The End