I shouldn't have told him that!_ Coffin
read. _Now he knows I'm alone with him!_

"It's O.K., son," repeated the captain. But his voice came out like a
buzz saw cutting through bone. "I had a little project here I was, uh,
playing with, and ... uh--"

"Yes, sir. Of course." _Humor him till I can get away. Then see Mr.
Kivi. Let him take the responsibility. I don't want it! I don't want to
be the skipper, with nobody between me and the sky. It's too much. It'll
crack a man wide open._

* * * * *

Mardikian's trapped eyes circled the little room. They fell on the
typer, and the drafts which Coffin had not yet destroyed.

Silence closed in.

"Well," said Coffin at last. "Now you know."

"Yes, sir." Mardikian could scarcely be heard.

"I'm going to fake this onto the receiver tape."

"B-b ... Yes, sir." _Humor him!_ Mardikian was drawn bowstring tight,
his nostrils flared by terror.

"You see," rasped Coffin, "it has to look genuine. This ought to get
their backs up. They'll be more united on colonizing Rustum than they
ever were before. At the same time, I can resist them, claim I have my
orders to turn about and don't want to get into trouble. Finally, of
course, I'll let myself be talked into continuing, however reluctantly.
So no one will suspect me of ... fraud."

Mardikian's lips moved soundlessly. He was close to hysteria, Coffin
saw.

"It's unavoidable," the captain said, and cursed himself for the
roughness in his tone. Though maybe no orator could persuade this boy.
What did he know of psychic breaking stress, who had never been tried to
his own limit? "We'll have to keep the secret, you and I, or--" No, what
was the use? Within Mardikian's small experience, it was so much more
natural to believe that one man, Coffin, had gone awry, than to
understand a month-by-month rotting of the human soul under loneliness
and frustration.

"Yes, sir," Mardikian husked. "Of course, sir."

_Even if he meant that_, Coffin thought, _he might talk in his sleep. Or
I might; but the admiral, alone of all the fleet, has a completely
private room_.

He racked his tools, most carefully, and faced about. Mardikian shoved
away, bulging-eyed. "No," whispered Mardikian. "No. Please."

He opened his mouth to scream, but he didn't get time. Coffin chopped
him on the neck. As he doubled up, Coffin gripped him with legs and one
hand, balled the other fist, and hit him often in the solar plexu