frantically to keep from drifting head-on into the sizzling beam that barred his way.

Albrekt anchored himself to a bunk and waved the heat beam in an arc above their heads. The metal ceiling smoked faintly.

"I won't kill you all unless I have to," he said calmly. "I can get along easily without one or two of you, though. Before you try anything like this again, I'd suggest you think seriously about which of you wants to die first."

Silence answered him. Migl still clung to the companionway ladder, about halfway up. Carrel clasped his knees in a sitting position about six inches off the floor near the round table in the center of the room. Qoqol, unable to stand upright anywhere aboard the ship, crouched like a spider against the farther wall.

Albrekt switched off the heat beam and motioned at Migl with the gun. Watching them closely, Albrekt moved to the companionway and pushed himself up through the hatch.

Locking himself in the control room, he devoted himself to serious thought for a while. Despite his warning, this sort of thing was likely to happen often. Eventually it must succeed, if only by the law of averages.

The trouble was, Albrekt was actually at a slight disadvantage. He knew by now that the absolute need for companionship in space was not idle talk. He had no intention of coasting alone, in a silent ship, for five and a half more months, and being shot as hopelessly insane when his Flanjo colleagues picked him up at the rendezvous.

One solution, of course, was to kill two of the crew members. Then neither of the two men left could afford to kill the other. For several reasons, Albrekt preferred to find another solution. He had heard rumors that personality conflicts between two people cooped up together in a spaceship drove them eventually at each other's throats. Another factor was that, as long as there were three of the others, Albrekt could hold the threat of killing one or two of them over them. Besides, their technical knowledge would be valuable to the Flanjos, and Albrekt wanted to face no disciplinary action for destroying any of them unnecessarily.

What was the substance of their threat to him, then? He examined it. Their threat was that they might reach the control room. He could not lock it from the outside, and he must come outside for good food and necessary companionship, so that line of reasoning got him nowhere.

But 

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