t on a spaceship. Certainly no
one who knew anything about the subject would have allowed human beings
to work around a thing like this.

Gene's skin crawled and prickled with the energies that saturated the
room. Little sparks leaped here and there, off his fingertips, off his
nose.

The Chief Engineer was on a metal platform above the machinery level.
The face had hair all over it, even on the eyelids. The eyes, popping
weirdly, were double. They looked as if second eyes had started growing
inside the original ones. They weren't reasonable; they weren't even
sane. The look of them made Gene sick.

The Engineer shook his head back and forth to focus the awful, mutilated
eyes. His voice was infinitely weary, strangely muffled. "Another
sacrifice to Moloch, an's the pity! So they put you down here, as if
there was anything to be done? Well, it'll be nice to work with someone
who still has his buttons--as long as they last. Sit down."

Gene sat down and the metal chair gave him a shock that made him jump.
"I don't know anything about this kind of work."

The man shrugged, "Who does? The pile runs itself. Ain't enough of it
moves to need much greasing. You ought to be able to find the grease
cups--they're painted red. Fill them, wipe off the dust, and wait. Then
do it over again."

"What's the score on this bucket?"

"We're all signed on with a billy to the knob. And _kept_ aboard by a
guard system that's pretty near perfect. After awhile the emanations get
to our brains and we don't care anymore. Then we're trusted employees.
Only reason I don't blow her loose, it wouldn't do any good."

He got up, a fragile old body clad in dirty overalls. He beckoned Gene
to follow him. He led the way to a periscope arrangement over the
shielded pile. Gene peered in. It was like a look into boiling Hell. As
Gene stared, the old man talked in his ear.

"Supposed to be perfectly shielded, and maybe they are. But _something_
gets out. I think it happens in the jet assembly. A tiny trickle of high
pressure steam crosses the atomic beam just above a pinhole that leads
into the jet tube. It's exploded by the beam, exploded into God knows
what, and the result is your jet. It's a wonderful drive, with plenty of
power for the purpose. But I think it forms a strong field of static
over the whole shell of the ship, a kind of sphere of reflection that
throws the emanations back into the ship from every point. Just my
theory, but it expla