Marines.

The new atomic engines required comparatively nothing in the way of fuel. Where previously ninety per cent of a ship's load capacity had been used for fuel, now a few thousand pounds of plutonium or a few hundred pounds of americum from Jupiter could drive the Philipuster almost as far as a catboat could sail under the breeze from the senator's speeches.

Space Travel, Inc., thoughtfully doubled Healey's pay, because by now he was an institution. He told Browne the act of being the first man to step on Martian soil had given him more eminence than he could have earned in a thousand years.

Sometimes, after that, he would see Mr. Zytztz, shuffling in or out of a port captain's office or around the administration building at Havanaport, carrying his worn master's ticket in a leaf-tip. Sometimes he would look haggard and limp, but always he seemed to hope.

Healey would have bought him a ship and given it to him, but he knew Mr. Zytztz would refuse it. He wanted—well, what did he want anyway? He wanted to be master of his own ship—and he had to earn that himself.

In 2160 the census showed no change in the Martians. In 2161 the Space Marines converted all their drives to atomics. Even the old Phoebus, now an antiquated tub used mostly for patrols to the moon and back, was equipped with brand new, late-type atomics that very nearly jerked her stanchions loose the first time they tried her out.

So it went until 2170. Healey had a Osterhus and was beginning to think seriously of retiring. Captain Browne ran the Philipuster. And Healey used to josh him whenever he showed signs of taking his duties too seriously.

"Some time I want to borrow the telephone of those three redheads you know back on Earth," Healey would say to Browne.

The Philipuster was a big ship. They had a crew of nearly two thousand, and on their quarterly trip in the fall of 2170, shortly after the census turned up the customary dearth of births among the Martians, Healey had aboard some fifty Zytztzes as crew members. They made much faster trips with the atomic drive, and so the Zytztzes could stand the jaunt to Jupiter without any trouble.

One night—they called it night because the ship's chronometer showed past 2100, although it was always dark in the ether—one night Mr. Zytztz was standing at a porthole looking in the usual direction of the sky. Healey was sitting back in his padded chair smoking a good 

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