around, then walked, single
file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was
sitting in the astronavigator's seat, checking over his star charts and
instruments. He glanced up at them as they came level with his cubicle.
He was the third man of the team, as used to them as they were to him.

"Fourteen hop adjustments to get us past Pluto and out of the heavy
traffic," he grumbled sourly. His round face and liquid brown eyes were
perpetually disgusted. "They keep saying over at Traffic that they're
going to provide a freeway out of the solar system so we can take it in
one hop, but they don't do it. Wonder when we'll ever go modern, start
doing things scientific?"

They paid no attention to his grumbling. That was just Louie.

"Then how many hops to Eden, after Pluto?" Tom asked.

"I figure twenty," Louie answered. "Can't take full light-year leaps
every time. There's stuff in the way. There's always stuff in the way to
louse up a good flight plan. Universe is too crowded. There'll be no
trouble getting _to_ Eden, no trouble _getting_ there. Make it in about
fourteen hours. Fourteen hours to go eleven lousy little light-years.
Fourteen hours I got to work in one stretch. Wait'll the union agent
hears you're working me fourteen hours without a relief. And are you
letting me get my rest now, so I can work fourteen hours? Or are you
stopping me from resting with a lot of questions?"

"But you think there may be trouble _after_ we get to Eden?" Tom asked.

Louie looked at him. There was no fear in the soft, brown eyes; just an
enormous indignation that life should always treat him so dirty.

"Don't you?" he asked.

4

Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror
and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should
take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned
forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners
of his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirty
mark. One couldn't stay forever at the peak of youth--not yet, anyway.
Perhaps he should think about that sometime.

Trouble was, there was always something more urgent....

He became conscious that Linda was standing in the bathroom door
watching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed.

"You used the no-beard just last month, Cal," she said. There was a
questioning note in her voice.

"Want to keep handsome," he said lig