Donna quietly. "Where do you stand
now, Phillips?"

"I suppose we'd better do it," he admitted. "Pretty vicious, aren't
you?"

"No!" she snapped. "I don't like it either; I've never caused the death
of any human being."

"Oh, sure. That's why you were on Luna!"

She looked at him levelly in the eye, but her shoulders drooped a trifle
with the resignation of one who has often been disbelieved.

"My husband was a nice guy," she murmured, "but he never did know when
he had a drink too many for piloting his jet. He passed out trying to
give me a wild ride, and I got to the controls just in time to
crash-land the rocket; that's where they found me before I came to."

"Oh," said Phillips.

"I'm not half as hard as I'm trying to pretend," Donna went on, "even
after a year on Luna. But I was a nurse before I was married. I'm
thinking about what it will be like if this plague hits the planets
before they find something to fight it with. The children ... imagine
that, will you?"

Phillips stared at the range indicator. It seemed there were times when
an ugly thing had to be done for the common good. He wondered how the
old-time executioners had felt, in the days when there had been judicial
homicide. There were still jailers, for that matter, and men who
butchered cattle.

"Call it a mercy killing," murmured Donna between pale lips. "Maybe you
think _that_ isn't still done once in a while, in spite of modern
society."

"Ummh," Phillips grunted. "Well, if you can watch at this end, Truesdale
and I can go set up a couple of torpedoes. I hope those rocket blasts
didn't give us away."

"According to Varret," said Truesdale, "there can't be many of them
still able to think straight enough to stand on watch. I wonder what
it's like...."

Phillips glanced askance at him, but led the way into the corridor.
First of all, he stopped at the rocket room to check the tube readings.
The fired jets had been automatically recharged.

* * * * *

They left the rocket room and climbed the ladder to the turret. Once
inside, Phillips spent the first few minutes inspecting the equipment
and thumbing through the manuals left there by Varret. Finally, the
bored Truesdale broke in upon his study.

"That old goat must be crazy to think he could toss us out here and have
us act like a trained crew. How can we even hope to do anything right,
without blowing ourselves up?"

"We can try," said Phillips col