eroom when a voice came from behind him:

"Getting thirsty again?"

"Where's the captain?" Greg yelled back. The man who had called to him
straightened from behind a row of boxes.

"Last time I saw you, you were more interested in drinks than in the
captain."

* * * * *

Greg looked hard at muscular fingers, and the ghost image of a bar back
on Earth materialized for an instant in the stockroom around the man. It
was the doctor who had given him instructions on how to find the
freighter recruiting office!

"So you're the one who had me shanghaied to Venus!" Greg sprang at the
man, fists flying.

The doctor ducked. Greg sprawled clumsily at the opposite wall, thrown
off balance by the slighter gravity maintained in the ship. He started
to rise, then dropped to his knees as knife-like pain shot through his
ankle. The doctor stood over him with that strange half-smile.

"You shouldn't be angry. You wanted transportation, didn't you?" He
kneeled to look at Greg's ankle and the pain conquered Greg's impulse to
smash a fist into his face.

"Exactly what I wanted," Greg answered bitterly. "Of course I wanted to
get shanghaied on a freight headed for Venus while my family's on Mars!"

"I think it's just a sprain, not a break," the doctor said, running a
finger over the swelling ankle. "But we'd better take a picture. Come
on." He hoisted Greg to a standing position with unexpected strength,
and walked him out of the storeroom to his cabin. Medical equipment
lined the room.

"Did it ever occur to you that someday you're going to get the lawbooks
thrown at you?" Greg asked, quietly but with hatred. "They stopped
tolerating this sort of thing centuries ago."

The doctor laughed. "Fine talk from a man who tried to smuggle himself
on Mars."

"You don't have any proof. I don't even know your name."

"It's Coleridge. You can put doctor in front of it, too. I really did
study and get a diploma. Then I decided I could have more fun out in
space than in some stuffy office back on Earth. Maybe you'd enjoy this
sort of life, too, if you haven't congealed completely." He sat Greg
before a small X-ray machine.

"I've always wanted to spend the rest of my life fighting dinosaurs on
Venus while my family is on Mars and my career is on Earth." Greg said
acidly.

"You know very well there aren't any dinosaurs on Venus," Coleridge
replied mildly. "It's practically perfect as a planet, with a few