, Tremaine, why not look my section over? You've been
neglecting me."

I'd borrowed Muller's keys and inspected the engine room from, top to
bottom the night before, but I didn't mention that. I hesitated now;
to a man who grew up to be an engineer and who'd now gotten over his
psychosis against space too late to start over, the engines were
things better left alone. Then I remembered that I hadn't seen
Wilcox's quarters, since he had the only key to them.

I nodded and went inside. The engines were old, and the gravity
generator was one of the first models. But Wilcox knew his business.
The place was slick enough, and there was the good clean smell of
metal working right. I could feel the controls in my hands, and my
nerves itched as I went about making a perfunctory token examination.
I even opened the fuel lockers and glanced in. The two crewmen watched
with hard eyes, slitted as tight as Grundy's, but they didn't bother
me. Then I shrugged, and went back with Wilcox to his tiny cabin.

* * * * *

I was hit by the place before I got inside. Tiny, yes, but fixed up
like the dream of every engineer. Clean, neat, filled with books and
luxuries. He even had a tape player I'd seen on sale for a trifle over
three thousand dollars. He turned it on, letting the opening bars of
Haydn's Oxford Symphony come out. It was a binaural, ultra-fidelity
job, and I could close my eyes and feel the orchestra in front of me.

This time I was thorough, right down the line, from the cabinets that
held luxury food and wine to the little drawer where he kept his
dress-suit studs; they might have been rutiles, but I had a hunch they
were genuine catseyes.

He laughed when I finished, and handed me a glass of the first decent wine
I'd tasted in months. "Even a small ozonator to make the air seem more
breathable, and a dehumidifier, Tremaine. I like to live decently. I
started saving my money once with the idea of getting a ship of my own--"
There was a real dream in his eyes for a second. Then he shrugged. "But
ships got bigger and more expensive. So I decided to live. At forty, I've
got maybe twenty years ahead here, and I mean to enjoy it. And--well,
there are ways of making a bit extra...."

I nodded. So it's officially smuggling to carry a four-ounce Martian
fur to Earth where it's worth a fortune, considering the legal duty.
But most officers did it now and then. He put on Sibelius' Fourth
while I fi