much impatience, the crew had been locked up too long."

"The old captain would not have tolerated such indiscipline," said Ekaterina.

"I won't tolerate much more from you, either." Svenstrup got his pipe going. "Here is my plan, We must have more information. I am going to put the Rurik into an orbit skewed to the ecliptic plane, as safe a hiding place as any. A few volunteers will stay hidden on Novaya, refining reaction-mass water and maintaining radio contact with the ship; everyone else will wait up there. One boat will go to Zolotoy and learn what it can. Its crew will not know the Rurik's orbit; they'll report back here. Then we can decide what to do."

He finished grayly: "If the boat returns at all, of course."

Grushenko stood up. Something like triumph blazed in him. "As a politico-military specialist, I have been selected and trained for linguistic ability," he said. "Furthermore, I have had combat experience in suppressing the Brazilian capitalist uprising. I volunteer myself for the boat."

"Good," said Svenstrup. "We need about two more."

Ekaterina Ivanovna Saburov smiled and said in her low, oddly gentle voice, "If a Ukrainian like Comrade Grushenko goes, a Great Russian must also be represented." Her humor faded and she went on earnestly, overriding the captain, "My sex has nothing to do with it. I am a gunnery officer of the World Soviet Space Fleet. I spent two years on Mars, helping to establish a naval outpost. I feel myself qualified."

Somehow, Holbrook was standing up. He stuttered incoherently for a moment. Their eyes speared him, a big square-faced young man with rumpled brown hair, brown eyes nearsighted behind contact lenses, his body drab in coveralls and boots. He got out finally: "Let Bunin take my post. I, I, I can find out something about their machinery—"

"Or die with the others," said Svenstrup. "We need you here."

Ekaterina spoke quietly. "Let him come, captain. Shall not an American also have the right to dare?"

CHAPTER III

The boat ran swiftly, accelerating on ion drive until Novaya was only one blue spark of beauty and Zolotoy became an aureate shield. There was much silence aboard. Watching his companions, Holbrook found time to think.

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