me from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But it
shook visibly as she tried to aim it.

"I'll shoot out the controls!"

Calhoun blinked. He'd had to make a drastic change in his estimate of
the situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now he
had to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disable
the ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't use
energy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. But this girl
threatened to destroy the ship rather than its owner, so she was not
actually an assassin at all.

"I'd rather you didn't do that," said Calhoun dryly. "Besides, you'd
get deadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our air
and food to give out."

Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter the
conversation:

"_Chee-chee-chee!_"

"A very sensible suggestion," observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down and
have a cup of coffee." To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede,
since that's where you say you want to go."

"I have a sweetheart there...."

Calhoun shook his head.

"No," he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packed
itself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But not
all. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and what
men weren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely your
sweetheart had died on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar or
saccho, and do you take cream?"

She trembled a little, but she took the cup.

"I don't understand."

"Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether he
spoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go around
trying to keep people from getting sick or dying. Sometimes we even
try to keep them from getting killed. It's our profession. We practise
it even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you make
such drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.
Especially since we're going there anyhow."

"You don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.

"Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us something
more believable presently. When did you eat last?"

"Yesterday."

"Would you rather do your own cooking?" asked Calhoun politely. "Or
would you permit me to ready a snack?"

"I--I'll do it," she said.

She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her how
to punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extrac