The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.

Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.

He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.

A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.

Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.

"Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.

He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket. "Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."

Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.

The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."

The loud-speaker blared. "Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking—"

With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.

Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.

"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.

Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel 

 Prev. P 2/10 next