Nor Iron Bars
THE Flyaway II, which was large enough to carry a hundred
passengers, seemed twice as large to Gordon Arpe with only
the crew on boardlarge and silent, with the silence of its
orbit a thousand miles above the Earth.
“When are they due?” Dr. (now Captain) Arpe said, for
at least the fourth time. His second officer, Friedrich Oestrei-
cher, looked at the chronometer and away again with boredom.
“The first batch will be on board in five minutes,” he said
harshly. “Presumably they’ve all reached SV-One by now. It
only remains to ferry them over.”
Arpe nibbled at a fingernail. Although he had always been
the tall, thin, and jumpy type, nail-biting was a new vice
to him.
“I still think it’s insane to be carrying passengers on a
flight like this,” he said.
Oestreicher said nothing. Carrying passengers was no
novelty to him. He had been captain of a passenger vessel on
the Mars run for ten years, and looked it: a stocky hard-
muscled youngster of thirty, whose crew cut was going gray
despite the fact that he was five years younger than Arpe. He
was second in command of the Flyaway II only because he
had no knowledge of the new drive. Or, to put it another
way, Arpe was captain only because he was the only man
who did understand it, having invented it. Either way you
put it didn’t sweeten it for Oestreicher, that much was
evident.
Well, the first officer would be the acting captain most of
the time, anyhow. Arpe admitted that he himself had no
knowledge of how to run a space ship. The thought of
passengers, furthermore, came close to terrifying him. He