not a
task for cowards."

Aside to me, he said: "You're to be the physician of this party, Bagley.
So I'm going to tell you what to expect when we take off. We're going to
have some mighty sick passengers aboard then."

"What do you mean, sir?" I said.

He pointed with his pipe toward the stern of the vessel. "See that ...
well, call it a booster. Ganeth-Klae designed it just before he
disappeared, using the last lot of _Indurate_ in existence. It will
increase our take-off speed by five times, and it will probably have a
bad effect on the passengers."

So we had left Earth, at night from a field out in Essex. Without
orders, without clearance papers, without an automatic pilot check.
Eighteen couples and one navigator--destination unknown. If the
Interstellar Council had known what Norris was up to, it would have been
a case for the Space-Time Commission.

Of that long initial lap of our voyage, perhaps the less said the
better. As always is the case when monotony begins to wear away the
veneer of civilization, character quirks came to the surface, cliques
formed among the passengers, and gossip and personalities became matters
of pre-eminent importance.

Rising to the foreground out of our thirty-six, came Fielding Mason,
tall, taciturn, and handsome, with a keen intellect and a sense of
values remarkable in so young a man. Mason was a graduate of Montape,
the French outgrowth of St. Cyr. But he had majored in military tactics,
psychology and sociology and knew nothing at all about astrogation or
even elemental astronomy. He too was a man of good breeding and
refinement. Nevertheless conflict began to develop between him and
Navigator Norris. That conflict began the day we landed on Coulora.

Norris stepped out of the air lock into the cold thin air, glanced
briefly about him and faced the eighteen men assembled.

"We'll divide into three groups," he said. "Each group to carry an
organic surveyor and take a different direction. Each group will so
regulate its marching as to be back here without fail an hour before
darkness sets in. If you find no sign of animal life, then we will take
off again immediately on your return."

Mason paused halfway in the act of strapping on his packsack.

"What's that got to do with it?" he demanded. "There's vegetation here.
That's all that seems to be necessary."

Norris lit his pipe. "If you find no sign of animal life we will take
off immediately on your return," he sa