go. I'm not sorry now. It's a pretty good life."

"Look, I've got some money." Greg struggled to his feet. "Who can I see
to get out of here?"

"Too late," Moore said. "We've blasted off. You've been out cold for two
days. Don't you feel the ship?"

Greg sat down again, and suddenly he felt better. After all wasn't he on
his way to Mars, where he had wanted to go all along? He could worry
about smuggling himself onto the planet later, when they started to toss
out the cargo....

Moore introduced him to his duties in the hours that followed, and later
joined him in their tiny cabin.

"You'll have to take the upper bunk as soon as you feel better," Moore
warned. "I got seniority, you know."

"Maybe I won't be around long. How do you go about skipping ship at
delivery point?"

"It can be done if you've got the money," Moore said. "They run these
boats to make money and they aren't particular about where the money
comes from. They never are sure what sort of a price they can get for
the refrigeration equipment and dehumidifiers and stuff."

"Refrigeration--dehumidifiers?" Greg stared at Moore. "Are they crazy?
Mars is the last place in the world to dispose of stuff like that!"

"Mars? Who said anything about Mars, bud?" Moore looked at him
curiously. "They need that stuff on Venus, because it gets hot and damp
there in the summer time. We're going to Venus, my friend!"

The words stunned Greg's mind. "But my wife and kids were sent to Mars,
and if I'm heading for Venus it'll be too late--"

"But you ought to have known that these birds only go to Venus--" Moore
began. Greg didn't give him a chance to finish, rising abruptly and
running from the cabin.

All the fear, worry and despair that he had felt since Dora's check day
transmuted magically into an alloy of anger and hatred against any
authority.

He searched for the officers' quarters, his feet stamping loudly against
the metal flooring, the noise thrusting new aches into his head, the
aches in his head increasing his fury.

Hopelessly lost after a moment, he opened one door and caught a glimpse
of inferno and the insulation-clad men who tended the propulsion units.
Twice he blundered into the space between the outer and inner hulls on
the wrong side of the ship. One panel in the wall that looked like a
door proved to be the lid for a viewer that gave a fantastically
beautiful image of the stars and planets outside the ship. He had
wandered into a stor