The Project Gutenberg EBook of Death Wish, by Robert Sheckley

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Title: Death Wish

Author: Robert Sheckley

Illustrator: Weiss

Release Date: August 31, 2009 [EBook #29876]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Death Wish

By NED LANG

Illustrated by WEISS

Compared with a spaceship in distress, going
to hell in a handbasket is roomy and slow!

The space freighter _Queen Dierdre_ was a great, squat, pockmarked
vessel of the Earth-Mars run and she never gave anyone a bit of trouble.
That should have been sufficient warning to Mr. Watkins, her engineer.
Watkins was fond of saying that there are two kinds of equipment--the
kind that fails bit by bit, and the kind that fails all at once.

Watkins was short and red-faced, magnificently mustached, and always a
little out of breath. With a cigar in his hand, over a glass of beer, he
talked most cynically about his ship, in the immemorial fashion of
engineers. But in reality, Watkins was foolishly infatuated with
_Dierdre_, idealized her, humanized her, and couldn't conceive of
anything serious ever happening.

On this particular run, _Dierdre_ soared away from Terra at the proper
speed; Mr. Watkins signaled that fuel was being consumed at the proper
rate; and Captain Somers cut the engines at the proper moment indicated
by Mr. Rajcik, the navigator.

As soon as Point Able had been reached and the engines stopped, Somers
frowned and studied his complex control board. He was a thin and
meticulous man, and he operated his ship with mechanical perfection. He
was well liked in the front offices of Mikkelsen Space Lines, where Old
Man Mikkelsen pointed to Captain Somers' reports as models of neatness
and efficiency. On Mars, he stayed at the Officers' Club, eschewing the
stews and dives of Marsport. On Earth, he lived in a little Vermont
cottage and enjoyed the quiet companionship of two cats, a Japanese
houseboy, and a wife.

* * * * *

His instructions read true. And yet he