, brave boys, we'll--'_"

He was singing. He had a terrible voice, but he could carry a tune, and
he was hammering it out at the top of his lungs.

"_Twas the last cruise of the_ Venus, _by God you should of seen us! The
pipes were full of whisky, and just to make things risky, the jets were
..._"

The crew were chuckling into their own chest phones. I could hear
Daniels trying to cut him off. But he kept going. I started laughing
myself. No one's supposed to jam an intercom, but it made the crew feel
good. When the crew feels good, the ship runs right, and it had been a
long time since they'd been happy.

He went on for another twenty minutes. Then his voice thinned out, and I
heard him cough a little. "Daniels," he said, "get a relief down here
for me. _Jump to it!_" He said the last part in a Master's voice.
Daniels didn't ask questions. He sent a man on his way down.

He'd been singing, the stoker had. He'd been singing while he worked
with one arm dead, one sleeve ripped open and badly patched because the
fabric was slippery with blood. There'd been a flashover in the drivers.
By the time his relief got down there, he had the insulation back on,
and the drive was purring along the way it should have been. It hadn't
even missed a beat.

He went down to sick bay, got the arm wrapped, and would have gone back
on shift if Daniels'd let him.

Those of us who were going off shift found him toying with the theremin
in the mess compartment. He didn't know how to play it, and it sounded
like a dog howling.

"Sing, will you!" somebody yelled. He grinned and went back to the "Good
Ship _Venus_." It wasn't good, but it was loud. From that, we went to
"Starways, Farways, and Barways," and "The Freefall Song." Somebody
started "I Left Her Behind For You," and that got us off into
sentimental things, the way these sessions would sometimes wind up when
spacemen were far from home. But not since the war, we all seemed to
realize together. We stopped, and looked at each other, and we all began
drifting out of the mess compartment.

And maybe it got to him, too. It may explain something. He and I were
the last to leave. We went to the bunkroom, and he stopped in the middle
of taking off his shirt. He stood there, looking out the porthole, and
forgot I was there. I heard him reciting something, softly, under his
breath, and I stepped a little closer. This is what it was:

"_The rockets rise against the skies,
Slow