Don did not take cold-sleep. He listened to a bunkroom discussion, full of half facts, as to whether or not cold-sleep counted against a man’s lifetime. “Look at it this way,” one passenger pontificated. “You’ve got so long to live—right? It’s built into your genes; barring accidents, you live just that long. But when they put you in the freezer, your body slows down. Your clock stops, so to speak. That time doesn’t count against you. If you had eighty years coming to you, now you’ve got eighty years plus three months, or whatever. So I’m taking it.”
“You couldn’t be wronger,” he was answered. “More wrong, I mean. What you’ve done is chop three months right out of your life. Not for me!”
“You’re crazy. I’m taking it.”
“Suit yourself. And another thing—” The passenger who opposed it leaned forward and spoke confidentially, so that only the entire bunkroom could hear. “They say that the boys with the bars up front question you while you are going under. You know why? Because the Commodore thinks that spies slipped aboard at Circum-Terra.”
Don did not care which one was right. He was too much alive to relish deliberately “dying” for a time simply to save the boredom of a long trip. But the last comment startled him. Spies? Was it possible that the I.B.I. had agents right under the noses of the High Guard? Yet the I.B.I. was supposed to be able to slip in anywhere. He looked around at his fellow passengers, wondering which one might be traveling under a false identity.
He put it out of his mind—at least the I.B.I. was no longer interested in him.
Had Don not known that he was in the Nautilus headed for Venus he might well have imagined himself in the Valkyrie headed for Mars. The ships were of the same class and one piece of empty space looks like another. The Sun grew daily a little larger rather than smaller—but one does not look directly at the Sun, not even from Mars. The ship’s routine followed the same Greenwich day kept by any liner in space; breakfast came sharp on the bell; the ship’s position was announced each “noon”; the lights were dimmed at “night.”
Even the presence of soldiers in the ship was not conspicuous. They kept to their own quarters forward and civilians were not allowed there except on business. The ship was forty-two days out before Don again had any reason to go forward—to get a cut finger dressed in sick bay. On his way aft he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
He recognized Sergeant McMasters. The sergeant was wearing the star of a master-at-arms, a ship’s policeman. “What are you doing,” he demanded, “skulking around here?”
Don held up his damaged digit. “I wasn’t skulking; I was getting this attended to.”
McMasters looked at it. “Mashed your finger, eh? Well, you’re in the wrong passageway. This leads to the bomb room, not to passengers’ quarters. Say, I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”
“Sure.”
“I remember. You’re the lad who thought he was going to Mars.”
“I’m still going to Mars.”
“So? You seem to favor the long way around—by about a hundred million miles. Speaking of the long way around, you haven’t explained why I find you headed toward the bomb room.”
Don felt himself getting red. “I don’t know where the bomb-room is. If I’m in the wrong passage, show me the right one.”
“Come with me.” The sergeant led him down two decks where the spin of the ship made them slightly heavier and conducted Don into an office. “Sit down. The duty officer will be along.”
Don remained standing. “I don’t want to see the duty officer. I want to go back to my bunkroom.”
“Sit down, I said. I remember your case. Maybe you were just turned around but could be you took the wrong turn on purpose.”
Don swallowed his annoyance and sat. “No offense,” said McMasters. “How about a slug of solvent?” He went to a coffee warmer and poured two cups.
Don hesitated, then accepted one. It was the Venerian bean, black and bitter and very strong. Don found himself beginning to like McMasters. The sergeant sipped his, grimaced, then said, “You must be born lucky. You ought to be a corpse by now.”