ally came to it. He recalled something the guide had
said about the Aurigeans' susceptibility to Earthly infections. That
must have been it. That had been why the creature had bellowed and run
to seal itself off from him. It was all his fault.

If he had not sneezed with his helmet open, the Aurigean would not be
dead. He would not be marooned in space. And the other Aurigeans, down
on Earth, would not be marooned there. Though they, he decided
wistfully, would probably get home sooner or later. They knew where home
was.

* * * * *

As far as he could, he made himself master of the ship and its contents.
He discovered, by arduous trial and error, which of the supposed foods
in the storerooms he could eat safely, which would make him sick, and
which were not foods at all. He found out which of the control board's
knobs and levers controlled the engines, and he shut them off. He
studied the universe around him, hoping to see some change.

After nearly a month, it happened. One star grew from a brilliant
pinpoint to a tiny disk, and each time he awoke it was larger.

Weaver took counsel with himself, and pasted a small piece of
transparent red tape over the place on the telescreen where the star
appeared. He scratched a mark to show where the star was on each of
three succeeding "days." The trail crawled diagonally down toward the
bottom of the screen.

He knew nothing about astrogation; but he knew that if he were heading
directly toward the star, it ought to stay in the same place on his
screen. He turned on the engines and swung the steering arm downward.
The star crawled toward the center of the screen, then went past. Weaver
painstakingly brought it back; and so, in parsec-long zigzags, he held
his course.

The star was now increasing alarmingly in brightness. It occurred to
Weaver that he must be traveling with enormous speed, although he had no
sensation of movement at all. There was a position on the scale around
the steering arm that he thought would put the engines into reverse. He
tried it, and now he scratched the apparent size of the star into the
red tape. First it grew by leaps and bounds, then more slowly, then
hardly at all. Weaver shut off the engines again, and waited.

The star had planets. He noted their passage in the telescreen, marked
their apparent courses, and blithely set himself to land on the one that
seemed to be nearest. He was totally ignorant of orbit