after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.

He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.

Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.

"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."

He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.

What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.

Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.

A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"

Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.

"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."

Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust 

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