Raymond F. Jones

There is nothing that a government can do that a privnts citizen can't do better — except make war and spend money.

That had been the philosophy and firm conviction of Joe, senior, now dead and gone these thirty years. Young Joe Williams was himself pushing sixty, but he had never found occasion to take issue with his father's belief. Rather, with the march of years, he had become more thoroughly convinced of it than ever.

He leaned forward across his desk a moment to look from the window of his second-story office to the vast landing field in front of the building. He confirmed his first glance. The figure he had seen was that of Inspector O'Conners, red tape artist deluxe.

What went wrong with a man's genes, Joe wondered, to make a bureaucrat out of him? A deep inner necessity for dependence on the power of the group? Whatever it was made it impossible for the red tape artists to stand on their own feet, think their own thoughts, and come to their own conclusions. They were afraid to spit without the authority of public law which they could call to mind by paragraph and line.

And Melvin O'Conners was a thoroughbred of his kind, Joe thought sourly. As long as the company had to endure an Inspection Office upon the premises, why did the chief inspector have to be Melvin O'Conners?

His secretary buzzed a moment later and the inspector came in. You could spot one of them a block away, thought Joe. There was something about the cut of their clothes, the shine of their shoes, their air of "You can't push John Law around, Bud."

"They still up there?" asked O'Conners.

"Well, where would they go?" growled Joe. "They'll circle Earth in that orbit until the next ice age at the rate you're unwinding the red tape. For the sake of a comma in some regulation you'd let people in distress hang on a sky hook for" — he glanced at the clock — "eighteen hours since they first asked to come in — while you fumble around to determine whether their ancestoral stock is pure enough to allow them to set foot on our sacred terra firma. It hasn't been six months since nine of them died because of your precious regulations. If I were on the Intergalactic Advisory Mission, I'd tell everybody to steer so clear of Sol that you'd feel like we were in solitary confinement."

"But, fortunately — for your business — you're not." The inspector glanced out at the field lined with tremendous machine shops, laboratories, and hotels — and the more than a hundred intergalactic ships in various stages of repair and disrepair.

"Fortunately, I'm not. The cross I bear is Emergency Inspection. Do they land or don't they? How long are you going to let those people — ?"

"Stop calling them people. They probably have six heads and forty-eight tentacles, and eat their young for breakfast."

"Anybody that has brain enough to transport themselves a hundred thousand light-years across space is people in my book," said Joe. He picked up a thick cigar and chomped heavily on it. "And they're in trouble. Do they land or don't they?"

"We're proceeding according to I.G. Board agreement," said O'Conners. "Regulations provide —"

"That even if a guy is about dead he can go ahead and die as long as he hasn't got a letter of introduction from I.G."

"Regulations provide," continued the inspector patiently, "that in case of first contact between a visiting race and a given planet, the representatives arriving shall present adequate data for identification which shall then be verified through the I.G. Central Operations unit. That is what we are doing."

"Even if it kills the strangers."

"No exceptions were provided or could be provided for emergency cases. You know that very well. You cannot have forgotten the Trojan incident of Malabar Seven. And so we are proceeding according to regulations and agreement. Any of us would get the same treatment from their planet, wherever that might be."

"You mean you haven't even got them pegged, yet? I told you yesterday they were from Nerane IV and I pointed it out on the charts and showed your central operators the encyclopedic data —"

O'Conners waved disparagingly. "Your sorter isn't official. It has to be verified by our official machines."

"'Sfunny," said Joe, "that after all these hundreds of years the word 'official' is still synonymous with inefficiency and general chowder-head-edness. My sorter gets the data in fifteen minutes — yours hasn't got it in more than eighteen hours."

"Official sources require accuracy. We could not afford to be wrong if the landing of this ship involves violation of the I.G.B. regulations, or if these creatures cannot be identified. Your sorter is not concerned with such factors, understandably. You are concerned only with repairing the vessel and making a profit on the operation."

"And what a wicked thing that is! Eh?" said Joe. "We've been over this before. I know when I'm licked, but when will that obsolete monstrosity get its official bowels in gear and give out with the data? I've had a crew standing by since yesterday."

O'Conners didn't answer. He looked speculatively around the plush, luxurious office that was Joe's one vice and his only indulgence. He looked out at the vast properties that represented as much as a small nation might have once possessed. The great shops and laboratories rivaled a government facility.

"We'll be taking you over one of these days," said the inspector. "A government can't tolerate a private enterprise of this scope. This should belong to the people."

"Like the Tyrannosaurus," muttered Joe in a cloud of smoke, " He must have kicked and jumped and squealed to the last, too. And you've got just about as much chance now as he had. As long as there is space, you bureaucrats will never be on top again. It took a civil world war to get your kind off the top of the heap once, and you're off for good. In an expanding economy civilization simply passes by while you fuss and holler. It's only in a shrinking world that people think they need bureaucrats and socialists to tell them what to do."

O'Conners shook his head sadly, "The government needs men like you. It's tragic that the organising and technical ability you possess should be coupled with such atavism."

He turned to the door. "I'll send yon an official clearance to bring them in as soon as — and if — the sorter verifies the data given by the disabled craft, and central confirms it."

He left.

Every time, Joe thought. Every time it was like this. Sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. He went to the window and looked out upon the hundred or so craft from every part of the universe that lay on the landing field. That they represented genius incredibly far removed from his comprehension troubled O'Conners not at all. One of them, a huge vessel a mile and a half long and fifteen hundred feet in diameter had come almost three million light-years out of space, the farthest communication that men of Earth had yet had with other sentient beings.

But O'Conners was not impressed. He'd kept them in an orbit above Earth's barrier screen for three days while he checked their credentials.

If there had turned up the slightest inconsistency in the communication between their alien minds and his primtive Earth mentality, he'd have refused entry to their crippled and nearly helpless vessel. He would probably have let them die in space rather than let them down, Joe thought bitterly. The bureaucratic mind!

He stepped back to the desk and called his repair superintendent. "Winfield, have you heard anything new from the Nerane IV?"

"Not for the last five hours. They might be dead by now if they're in any serious personnel trouble aboard."

"Yeah, they might be, mightn't they? Just like six months ago when he held the Cordomarians off until nine of them died. Nine specimens of the most brilliant intellect we've ever known — sacrificed to a regulation. We're bringing them down. It's not going to happen again."

"But O'Conners - !"

"They have an ellipsoidal hull. He couldn't tell them from a Croesan Nightwing or a Hammerlane."

"As soon as we key the screen to drop it through, some bright lad in central will pick up the data. They're watching us too closely."

"We'll take that chance. People's lives are more important than O'Conners' regulations. Better send out a boarding party if you haven't heard for that long. See if anyone can get into them. Let me know what their trouble is."

"0.K. I'll send out Perkins and his crew."

Joe moved away and stood by the window again. This out there was his, he thought savagely, and no bureaucrat was going to regulate him into murdering his customers. He'd built up this business from the modest scratch his father had started, and it was his to use. He only wished he had someone to pass it on to. There was Richard, of course, but Richard had disappeared fifteen hundred light-years away twelve years ago. It would be a vain hope to suppose that Richard would ever inherit "Joe's Service and Repair".

In the early days of intergalactic flight, when the super-cee ships were first brought out, a vessel was little more than a flying machine shop and laboratory. It had to be equipped with facilities for virtually rebuilding itself in case of failure or disaster.

That robbed the ships, especiallty the early small ones, of much of their useful load. Finally, when men made contact with other intelligent life they found it was almost the same among every other group.

For some reason, ninety percent of other inhabited worlds were almost diametrically across the galaxy. When the first meager flights probed earthward, in response to man's explorations, old Joe Williams had been just a boy. He'd walked through the alien hulls in ecstatic rapture. He was only fifteen when he saw the first crippled ship whose occupants had managed to land it on alien earth at the end of its last flight.

They were technicians and navigators, but not engineers. They could not duplicate or repair the worn and shattered power plant of their ship. For five years they lived as prisoners aboard their ship until they were able to get transportation back.

That incident gave him the clue to what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. This was only the start of a new frontier of technology. There would be increasing hoardes of visitors from other worlds, now that they were aware that an inhabited planet in this region had been located. There would be a place for Earthmen who could repair those alien vessels when the need came.

There were others who had the same idea. But Old Joe had got the jump on them. He saw that mere skill in terrestrial technology would not be enough. After he graduated from the best schools on Earth, he spent five years hopping from one planetary system to another studying where he could, picking up clues and scraps of information about other world technologies, how their spaceships were powered and run, the biology of their occupants, the needs that he might be able to supply on Earth.

It wasn't easy. The worlds across the galaxy were just beginning to set up the First Galactic Council. There were suspicions and doubts, and uneasy meetings. But he obtained enough.

Returning to Earth, he bought twenty-five square miles of American desert and set up business in a veritable shack. For three years he had no customers.

Then he dickered with the government for that impounded vessel which had been abandoned when he was a boy. It was decided that, since the original owners had not come for it by now that a precedent might well be established by selling it to Joe for a big chunk of his few remaining bucks.

And he rebuilt it. It was a pip, in view of his knowledge and experience he'd gained from his travels. He'd run across an almost identical drive among the Irdians. But he was too broke to do more than take it on a single test run to Mars and back.

That was enough. Somehow the news got around the galaxy faster than the ship itself could have done.

Joe was made.

That was the beginning. The infant FGA sponsored a program of approved service and repair stations at strategic points throughout the galaxy and Joe was automatically for it because by then he knew more than any other Earthman about foreign ships and drives.

It had been a reputation for Young Joe to maintain — and he'd maintained it. If only there were someone to turn it over to —

As usual, the politicians came pounding hard on the heels of the scientists, bent on regulating their betters. Some worlds were more prone to this tendency than others, but Earth was right up front in this respect. There had been a few unfortunate incidents in the meeting of alien cultures — but far fewer than even the most hopeful had supposed. An almost universal fact was that by the time a race had reached the stars it had begun to mature.

Joe turned back to the desk on which lay the data on the strangers from Nerane IV. Their planet was one of the most nonterrestrian so far encountered. Little commerce passed between its peoples and the rest of the galaxy, yet their ships occasionally called on exploratory or cultural missions, though none had been to Earth before.

The creatures had a hard exoskeleton. Stiff, bony appendages supported them on a planet eight times the mass of Earth. They lived in a yellow-brown fog of nitrogen peroxide at a pressure of about one sixth Earth atmosphere.

In an almost symbiotic relationship they lived with another species, a small, remotely monkeylike creature called mensa. These were controlled by telepathic forces and performed, the physical work which the clumsy exoskeletons of the more intelligent creatures did not permit.

Joe read through the data from the massive library his company had accumulated on a hundred thousand planets and cultures. He did not have the slightest conception of what kind of metabolism an atmosphere of nitrogen peroxide could support — or even if it were necessary to the creatures' metabolism. But, at any rate, it was reported that their ships were provided with such an atmosphere.

Winfield called as he finished the file.

"Perkins is in contact with them," he said, "They were just about to give up and go away. He didn't think it necessary to go aboard since they seemed to be doing all right for the time being. One of ihem is very sick, they said. That's one reason why they're in such a steam to get the ship repaired."

"All right. We still have no official clearance on them. Get them down. Use one of the pressure hangars, just in case. We wouldn't want to smash them with our atmospheric pressure in case of accident. And I'd hate to have theirs get loose on the field."

"Think we ought to have quarters for the crew?"

"Do you know how many there are?"

"Just two, they say."

"Two? On a ship that size?" Joe recalled the photographs and plans of Neranian ships. "I'd say there ought to be a hundred of them at least. Something funny if only two are aboard. Anyway, we'd better get quarters ready. It might be necessary to evacuate the ship to work on it."

It was about a half hour later that the dark oval of the ship appeared over the field. The service ship in which Perkins and his crew rode followed at a little distance, talking the strangers down.

It wasn't without reason that Old Joe had picked a desert site for his operations. Some of the visitors were sloppy pilots near a planet, and at other times ships came in almost completely out of control, crashing all over the landscape in a futile attempt to set down normally.

But the Nerane ship was adequately controlled. Joe wouldn't have called it a first-class landing, but it was good enough. He Saw Perkins land a short distance away. Within minutes the ship was being towed towards the large, pressurized hangar where no damage would be done if the obnoxious atmosphere within the ship were to get free.

Joe turned away. He would have liked to have gone out and handled the job himself, but there were too many other matters at hand. Too many executive matters. Joe gagged on that word. It made him think of plump, jolly men at luncheon clubs.

It was six-thirty, and the evening crews had come on, when he folded up his papers and decided to call it a day. Many of the customers insisted on continuous attention to their needs, so Joe had long ago gone on a round-the-clock basis. He wondered how they were coming on the Nerane ship.

Even as he thought about it, his phone buzzed and Litchfield, Chief Repair Engineer, spoke:

"Joe? This Nerane IV ship is a screwball setup. We can't find anything wrong with the thing. It's a heavy-water outfit with a type eight drive and a few modifications. As far as we can see it's in perfect working order. The Neranians say it goes all right up to about half cee, but the super-cee won't throw in. We've checked it with the Manson field, and it works perfectly as far as we can see. I don't think these soap-brains know how to run the ship."

"Were there only two of them aboard as Perkins said?"

"That's right."

"How about their mensa? That's the little monkeys that they use to do the heavy work. Telepathic symbiosis."

"Didn't see anything of them. Just these two crabshells."

"Well — it's none of our business if things aren't according to Hoyle with the customers. You're sure they're Neranians?"

"I'm not sure of anything. They look like the pictures in our library books."

"I was thinking maybe they had bought the ship from the Neranians and perhaps had not been instructed properly."

"But look — how could they get clear out here, if the super-cee had never been working. That's about ninety thousand light-years, isn't it?"

"Something like that. Maybe something's conked out that the Manson field doesn't show. There could be a first time. Take the ship up on a run and see what the trouble is. That's about the only way."

"Yeah, but I'd like to get away from that, unless we could dump the gas. If we don't, it means wearing the barrel bottoms, and it's no fun riding in those in a ship that's bucking its super-cee."

"Think of something else then — Oh, let's take it up. I'll go with you. Get things ready. I'll be down in a minute. While you're waiting, try a cerebral analogue on them."

"We tried to. They refused to have anything to do with it. Wouldn't let their brains be tinkered with. A coverup, I suspect, to keep us from finding out how small a quantity of the stuff they've got."

"Maybe I can talk them into it. Hang on."

It wouldn't have been so bad if the business involved merely straight mechanical repair. They could have repaired hulls, replaced reactor piles, counteracted wild radioactivity, rebuilt drives, or anything else in the mechanical or nuclear line, but in nearly every job they had to deal with — usually contend with — the personality and alien thinking of the crew. It was tough enough trying to figure out how to repair a drive manufactured two million light-years away on a planet that no Earthman had yet seen by creatures whose thoughts were only remotely like those of men — but when members of the species, who were ignorant of the principles of their own machines, tried to tell Joe's men how to fix things, then it got complicated.

That's why the biological and psychological departments of his company were nearly as big as the mechanical.

He went to the lock in front of the closed hangar and donned one of the coated steel, articulated joint suits which would enable him to enter the atmosphere of the ship. These were the uncomfortable outfits known as "barrel bottoms" in which it was sometimes necessary to work inside the foreign vessels. They would stand anything from a vacuum to a, hundred atmospheres pressure, and were completely noncorrosive in any liquid or gas that anyone had thought about to date.

There was no opening for vision. The helmets were faceless steel blanks. Sight was by view screen entirely — a small plate set in front of the wearer's face.

Joe stepped inside the hangar before he remembered to turn his plate on, and stumbled around in blindness.

"Where are you going — ?" He heard Litchfield's voice.

"Haven't worn one of these for so long —" he mumbled while his fingers sought the controls. "There —"

The interior of the hangar showed on his plate. Floodlights poured illumination over the polished hull. Beautiful, seamless construction, Joe noted.

"Where's your cerebropath? Inside?"

"No. We found some terminals in the ships lock so we ran some leads and put our end outside. It's over here."

In spite of the paramagnetic assistance, Joe waddled awkwardly in the heavy suit. On the other side of the ship he came to a panel of apparatus with a cable of leads running into the open lock door of the ship. On a screen, he saw the interior. The two Neranians were looking at him through a thick yellowish brown haze that was the atmosphere in which they lived.

He had long been accustomed to appearances of foreign creatures, which were repulsive by Earth standards, but these two specimens were among the most unbeautiful he had ever seen.

He stepped up to the instrument and spoke to them, the machine automatically making a semantic transfer of his language meanings into theirs. "I am Joe Williams," he said. "You have heard of me, of course, since you have come here for repairs."

"Your name is well known throughout this and many other galaxies," said one of them. He couldn't tell which. The voice that spoke was not theirs, of course, but only the electromechanical reproducer of the instrument.

"We felt sure that you could repair our ship," continued the Neranian. "We have far to go, and one of us is sick. We cannot make use of our super-cee drive. We have been disappointed by the report of your technicians that they can find nothing wrong with the mechanism."

"Our tests show the super-cee to be operating." said Joe. "We thought perhaps it would be best to take the ship out for a trial run. You might be able to demonstrate the trouble better that way, however, we could possibly save time if you would allow a cerebral analogue check."

"This means mind reading — ?"

"Well ... not exactly -"

"I fear we cannot submit. We do not understand your meaning. The test is unfamiliar to us. You will, naturally, excuse our suspicions."

"Of course. But the test is based on a simple premise. In every race it has been found that the artifacts of the culture have analogous structures in the brain cells of the species. Very frequently, when we find a complex piece of equipment which we cannot analyse, we can discover its means of operation by means of analogues derived from the fundamental structure of the brain of the creating species."

The two Neranians were silent, as if conferring with each other for a moment. Then the voice came again. "We cannot permit it. We would prefer that you make a check flight."

Joe shrugged inside his suit. "As you wish."

The cerebropath was moved inside the ship. Joe and Litchfield went aboard with two young technicians named Barnes and Hamilton.

In the murky atmosphere of the ship, Joe was sure his suit was leaking. He would have sworn he could smell the foul stuff the Neranians lived in.

Must be getting old, he thought. He remembered when he was a kid and his father had taken him through the first ships from out of the distant galaxies. He remembered the kind, ugly faces of those first visitors he'd met. But it was just as well that that kind of thrill didn't last forever, he supposed. Nobody could live all his life on the high emotional plane he enjoyed when he was a kid.

The ship glided out of the open doors of the hangar under the guidance of the ground crew. It was towed far out beyond the shops to the desert testing-stand field.

Joe watched the Neranians' handling of the ship with a critical eye. "I thought you people always used your mensa," he said abruptly.

The two at the control panel seemed to stiffen, he thought afterwards. They hesitated, then one spoke, "We are trying to get away from them. It is cumbersome to depend on them. We have been trying a surgical technique to enable us to do without them."

Joe grunted. It didn't look as if they had been very successful. They were clumsy in their manipulation of the controls.

"Head out at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic," he ordered. To his companions, he said, "You three go down and watch the engines. When the sub-cees get up to limit, I'll come back there and try to throw in the manuals on the super-cee."

The three men ducked awkwardly through the low corridors. The ship was designed with paragravity controls for horizontal walking instead of vertical climbing.

Fortunately, the Neranians were no more than a foot shorter than the Earthmen. Occasionally, there were ships in which it was impossible for a man to get about through the small openings that fitted the builders.

As the ship sped swiftly upward, Joe watched the indicators. As far as he could see, everything was functioning well.

"All right," he said to the Neranians. "I'll go back and try the super-cee from the engine room. If it works all right, you cut it out after a couple of minutes, and we'll work on it from up here. You have to cut it off, remember. Once it's on, we can't get into it from down there because of the field buildup."

The creatures gave the Neranian equivalent of a nod. Joe ducked and clumped his way through the low, narrow passages to the far rear of the ship.

"There is nothing wrong with this ship," said Litchfield. "We've gone over every item of the super-cee."

"Well, we'll soon know. Get behind the shield." Joe stepped up to the intricate panel. The manipulations were extremely involved and required great exactness to keep the ship from vanishing in very small particles of stardust when the faster-than-light drive came on. Finally, it was done, and he squeezed a pair of handles, the Neranian equivalent of a relay push button. Instantly, a copper haze surrounded the mass of equipment beyond the panels, and the meter needles swung over.

"See?" said Litchfield. "Nothing wrong with it."

Joe watched the panels in silence. The engineer was right. There was no question about it. But why had the Neranians come to him with a perfectly good ship and asked for repairs?

"Let's go back and have a talk with our friends," he said. There's just the bare possibility that there's trouble in the relays and these birds didn't have sense enough to try the engine room manuals before yelling for help."

The four of them left the engine room, swinging the automatic bulkhead door behind them. The next chamber through which they passed was a mechanical storage room.

Joe pushed on and shoved against the next bulkhead door. He shoved again, then leaned on it hard and swore. "What goes on?"

Suddenly, Litchfield went to the barrier behind them and pushed. It was locked. The engineer matched Joe's swearing and looked at his boss.

"Locked — the mechanicals controlled from up front. Does it make sense?"

Joe expelled air slowly through his teeth. "It begins to," he said. "It begins to."

"I don't get it," said young Barnes, the technician. Fear edged his voice.

"This ship is hot," said Joe. "That's our answer."

"Hot?" said Hamilton. "You mean radioactive? We checked —"

"No. It's a vulvar term common in my Dad's day. There was some of it then, but almost none now. It means that those two clamshells up front just took off with the ship without asking anybody's permission. In plain language, they stole it."

"I don't follow you," said Litchfield.

"They aren't Neranians at all. They must be very closely related, but they're not the same species. We should have known that by the absence of the mensa. That story about surgical modification is a lot of guff.

"This ship is designed for operation by mensa. There are handles and buttons and wheels, but nothing to fit the claws of that pair up front."

"Well, it still doesn't make sense. Why did they come to us? Why all the talk about failure of the super-cee? Most of all, where do we go from here?"

"I suspect they're probably a pair of pretty desperate criminals. Thugs are thugs in any language — and generally not very bright. Setting the automatic controls of the super-cee requires fine digital manipulation. They simply couldn't do it. They've come on sub-cee from wherever they swiped the ship. They didn't even know about the engine manuals, I suppose, or else they couldn't even set them. They hoped to get us to start the thing on automatics, and then planned to get rid of us somehow. It might have been a little tough unless they have weapons that would go through these suits easily. But we made if perfectly simple for them, bless our little hearts. We offered to walk right into their trap.

"As to where we go from here — I don't think they're worrying much about it. But we'd better. Probably the only atoms of free oxygen aboard are in these tanks of ours. Mine says" — he scanned the indicators beside the viewplate in front of his face — "about six hours to go."

"I've got eight," said Litchfield. "Maybe we could even it up some way."

"Mine's seven," said Hamilton, "and we can't even it up. There's no provision for decoupling the tanks in an atmosphere like this. Which is a neat piece of design."

"I've got four here," said Barnes. His voice was on the verge of cracking, it seemed to Joe. "I'll be seeing you, boys."

"Cut it out," said Joe uneasily. "We'll get out of here and have clam chowder for desert. Though I must admit the 'how' of doing so eludes me at the moment. Four hours — and they've souped this up to about eight cee, I'd judge — we'll be a long way from home."

They moved slowly about the room. There were two other chambers open to them, one on either side, but there was no exit. They decided that one contained the machinery for producing and circulating the foul nitrogen peroxide atmosphere. The other was a storage chamber for the heavy water used in the reactor.

There was a small store of tools, but none that would dent or burn the doors. Barnes and Hamilton had brought along their kits, but they held nothing that would help.

They sat down on rows of cannisters. Joe looked about at the blank-faced, monstrous-looking suits that housed his companions. They were silent, thinking that this was a stupid way of winding up. There was Barnes with only four hours of oxygen to go. They couldn't share theirs with him.

"Why couldn't we wreck the atmosphere plant?" asked Barnes suddenly. "Maybe we could even find a way to discharge it into space. That would fix those clamshells' little red wagon good."

"Yes, but what good would it do us?" said Joe. "We'd still be locked in here and no way out."

"We'd be taking them with us, anyway —" Barnes muttered savagely.

"Cut it out," said Joe. "This is entirely impersonal. Get your gray matter agitating on the physical problem of getting out. You can hate them afterwards. Now, as I see it, the problem is to persuade them to open up the door voluntarily. We can't possibly get out unless they do."

"You put it so neatly," said Hamilton. "What are we going to do? Offer a free ride to the one that opens up first?"

They were young, Joe thought, and they'd never been trained for danger. Life was too soft for kids nowadays. It was probably the first time these two youngsters had ever considered the possibility of fatal circumstances occurring to them.

They wouldn't be of much help.

He turned to Litchfield. "What do you think?"

"I'm thinking, but there's not much production so far. I don't see what we can do to make them turn us loose."

"Irritate 'em."

"Like itching powder under their shells, huh?"

"Maybe there's something here that we could pour into the atmosphere system. Let's have a look anyway. Tear open some of these cans."

He glanced at the clock face in the helmet. A full half hour had passed since the doors had first been clamped. Three and a half to go — for Barnes.

Litchfield held up an open can. He had a steel claw full of mushy substance. "Must be food. Do you know what they eat?"

"No. Keep going and keep thinking."

The two technicians were halfheartedly obeying Joe's instructions, but they had no enthusiasm for the task. They'd given up completely, he thought. He and Litchfield would have to carry them.

He kept on, opening boxes and storage cabinets, trying to identify the substances encountered, his mind constantly examining and rejecting each item for possible means of attracting the captors to the locked chamber.

He wandered on into the chamber where the huge tanks of heavy water were stored.

"We haven't found a supply of drinking water, have we?" said Joe.

"All food as far as I can tell here," said Litchfield.

"On a planet with an atmosphere of nitrogen peroxide I wonder if there wouldn't be an absence of open bodies of water. Perhaps the metabolism of any life there would have to exist without water."

"I don't know," said Litchfield. "Why? Weil — I suppose not. Constant reaction would produce nitric acid rain. In time there would be no more water because the process would go to termination. On a planet like that they'd probably handle water the way we do nitroglycerine. So —" Litchfield suddenly shouted. "Joe! That's it! We'll irritate these crabs until they'll swear they're being broiled alive."

"I don't get it," said Hamilton. "What are you going to do?"

"Pipe some of this water over to the atmosphere pumps. Those crabs will be breathing nitric acid vapor - providing they breathe. If they don't, I'll bet it will sting their hides and send them back here yammering to get in."

"Yeah ... yeah ... it might do it," breathed Barnes. His voice was almost pitiful at this apparent reprieve.

"Well, let's not bank on it until it's done," Joe growled. "This won't be easy with what we've got to work with."

"Turn about will have to be within an hour —" Barnes murmured.

They found a coil of tubing among the supplies. It was soft enough to bend, but it couldn't be melted or soldered with the small torch that their kits contained. They had to improvise a coupling to the tank outlet. The tubing was too soft to permit tight clamp. It's size would only permit a butt joint.

The makeshift flange coupling that they finally devised cost them a full half hour. And they still had to provide an inlet to the gas system.

While Barnes and Hamilton cut into the tough metal of the ducts just ahead of the blowers, Joe and Litchfield made some nozzles and fitted them crudely to the end of the line. The height of the tank provided some standpipe pressure, and the blower made it partial vacuum in the duct so they believed the water would be broken up sufficiently.

They inserted the nozzles and turned the water on. It sprayed out with satisfying sharpness. They packed the hole tightly to improve the spray. Then they sat back to wait.

"How long do you think it will take?" asked Barnes hopefuly.

"No telling," said Joe. "It will take a while to build up sufficient concentration of acid for them to notice. We're a long way from the control room —"

Nobody said anything. An hour and a half left. Past turn-about time for Barnes. They were going to have to watch him die, Joe thought. But they wouldn't see him. Hidden behind the blank steel face of the helmet, his face wouldn't be seen by anyone. It would be like dying all alone.

"You lie down," he said abruptly, "Breathe as slowly as possible. Close your eyes and stop stewing. The rest of us will get busy and rig up some kind of an electrolysis setup so that the moment we get out of here, we'll blow out one of these water tanks and rig up the other one to collect some oxygen. We can get in there and equalise our suit supplies and replenish them. Maybe a couple of us can hole up in the tank and let the others run the ship back home by using the supply of the four suits. Take it easy, Barnes. We're all going to get out of this."

He didn't believe that any more, he thought, but it helped to say it. The water line had cost them too much time. Turn-about was too far gone, even with such added velocity as they might obtain during return. Litchfield could go another hour and a half. He might make it alone.

The work kept their minds from degenerating into circularity of thought. They had to exercise their brains to rip out the right power lines while they were hot, and feed them to the terminals they had rigged up. With a collector for the oxygen and hydrogen, they were all ready to be inserted in a tank as soon as the gas could be blown free by opening the chambers to space.

And then they had done all that they could do. There was nothing at all to do but wait. They lay on the floor to conserve their oxygen. Joe kept thinking maybe there was something they had overlooked — something utterly simple that would enable them to move right out of the chamber.

Barnes had been quiet for a long time, Joe wanted to talk to the boy, but he couldn't think of anything to say. It was no good telling him he wasn't going to die — because it was a thousand to one chance he was.

When there was only fifteen minutes suppy left to Barnes, Joe said, "Barnes - ?"

Only after a long pause did the technician answer, and then his voice was weak and sleepy sounding. "Yes - ?"

"I'm sorry, kid. I thought I was smart breaking the regulations and letting these crabs down. A regulation would have sent them away, and none of us would be here now."

"It's O.K.," said Barnes, and his voice sounded more secure than it had at any time since they had been trapped. "It's not bad this way. I feel just kind of sleepy. I guess they call it anoxia, don't they? Hope you guys make it. Be sure to see Mary. Tell her I wasn't even scared a bit."

And then they heard the scratching at the door. Unbelieving, they listened, and heard it again. The three of them scrambled to their feet as swiftly as possible in the clumsy armor. They hid behind the door, and waited for it to open a crack.

Joe got his steel fingers into it and jerked. The creature on the other side stumbled and fell into the room, threshing weakly on the floor. His skin, visible between the joints of the exoskeleton was livid with acid burn, and his eyes were nearly shut.

"Take care of Barnes," Joe ordered the other two, "I'll go up front and turn us around."

"The other one might be armed —" Litchfield warned.

"It won't matter if he's in as bad condition as this one. Block this door and come up in three minutes if we don't turn."

Joe had little fear of opposition after seeing what the acid had done to the one creature, but he kept a sharp watch as he came into the control chamber.

He needn't have. The creature was slumped in the cradle that supported him before the panel of controls. He saw Joe but made no move. The cerebropath was still operating, and he spoke.

"We ... didn't know what had happened to you. We thought you were ... taking care of engines. Didn't know you were locked in —"

A liar to the last. Joe smothered a temptation to crash his steel fist into that face. He unfastened the straps and dumped the creature to the floor. Swiftly, he cut out the super-cee drive. The controls worked perfectly, as he had known they would. The creatures had been lying from the first.

He turned the ship around with the reaction motors, checked his position. He thought the ship had moved in a straight line since takeoff. He reversed the heading a hundred and eighty degrees; That would put them close. Later, he could correct for small errors. He threw in the super-cee again and locked it.

He started back to the rear of the ship. The creature on the floor stirred, but Joe knew there was no fight left in it. The acid vapor still poured through the ship, and there was no way to get it out now. They'd have to take it until they got back to Earth.

He returned to the rear of the ship. The two armored figures were still bending over the form of Barnes.

"He died," said Litchfield. "We got the oxygen generator going, but it ts too slow building up pressure. He was almost gone the last time he spoke to us."

Red tape, Joe thought. Red tape would have saved young Barnes. If they had been careful enough to check the incoming ships and passengers adequately, Barnes would be alive and home with Mary.

O'Conners was right, he thought dully. You had to be accurate. You couldn't afford a slip. This was what happened when you slipped.

And to be absolutely sure, you had to be a dealer in red tape.

Joe turned away from the dead technician. From now on his place would be known throughout the systems as the house of red tape. He'd make O'Conners' office look like the sloppiest port of entry anywhere. Joe Williams would be the king of red tape.

It was well past sun-up when they brought the ship back over the field. Navigational corrections on the Nerane instruments had taken longer than they had thought.

Barnes' wife was waiting by the administration building in the new yellow car that Barnes had been quite proud of. Waiting to take him home, and Joe would have to tell her that her husband was never coining home again.

O'Conners was there, too. The three men climbed down from the ship, their suits still on. O'Conners advanced towards them.

"Mr. Williams - ?" He laughed faintly at the blank steel faces. "I presume one of you gentlemen is Mr. Williams."

No one said anything. Joe hated him because he had been so right about the regulations.

"There'll be serious consequences from you admitting this ship without clearance," said O'Conners. "Our report from Nerane IV shows that this ship has been stolen. We will have to commandeer such of your facilities as are necessary to impound the ship and the crew. As for your breaking regulations, there may be some amelioration in the fact that you made possible the capture of the ship and the thieves —"

"They're dead," said Joe tonelessly. "One of our boys is dead, too."

O'Conners seemed taken aback. "That's very serious. It greatly complicates matters. Regulations provide for an investigation by the Mission in the case of dealh of one species aboard the commercial vessel of another."

"I said one of our boys was dead," repeated Joe. "Don't regulations provide for any sympathy or consolation? Don't they allow you any expression of human feeling whatever?"

"Of course," said O'Conners hastily. "The department will express official condolence to — the next of kin. I'll have to check with central, however, to determine if I'm authorized to speak in the name of the department or if it must come from higher up. You know how rigid organization is."

"Yes — I know," said Joe.

He had been wrong, he thought with fierce satisfaction. Red tape wasn't the way. Red tape wasn't synonymous with the precautionary, careful thinking that Joe should have done.

Joe leaned over and picked up a two-inch bar of steel that had been carelessly dropped on the field. In the steel hands of the armor suit he slowly twisted it until it sheared in two. He dropped the pieces on the ground. He advanced on O'Conners. The inspector looked from side to side at Joe's companions uneasily. "What are you doing -?"

Joe reached out swiftly and clamped him between the two steel arms. The inspector squealed and wriggled loose. Joe let him drop to the dusty ground.

For a moment, O'Conners looked from one to the other of the faceless men. "You'll pay for this! I'll sue -"

They advanced again. The disheveled man turned and ran in panic across the field.

Yes, he'd pay, Joe thought tiredly. But it was worth it to see that red tape artist scrambling in the dust. He shuddered when he thought back to that moment when he'd almost believed that O'Conners' way was right.

That young Barnes had died because of carelessness in dealing with the strangers was bitter knowledge. But regulations piled on regulations were not the cure for carelessness.

The red tape promoters added law to law and pretended it was wisdom. They demanded obedience to regulation merely for the sake of regulation, and they had long ceased to think outside the scope of their sacred rules.

But they betrayed themselves when their laws did not cover the situation at hand. There had been the Trojan incident of Malabar Seven. There had been the death of the nine Cordomarians. And there was the death of Barnes.

There was no simple answer. All the laws in creation could not cover all the cases of emergency aboard interstellar ships. Each had to be made a separate case, and sometimes you could make mistakes that way. But not as many as by the blind application of blanket regulations. The fight that Joe had carried on for so long to have the regulations modified would have to go on.

He turned back to the building and changed from the steel armor suit. Then he went across to the girl who was still waiting in the yellow car.