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ard appraisal, he said to him, "Come back tomorrow with your duds and papers. I may be able to use you as a first after all."
"Thanks," said Hartwell briefly, and strode out of the ship.
The Stellar outfit had a bad reputation, but it was his only means of escaping the plague or slavery. He would gladly have shipped as quartermaster--or even an ALB--to get to another planet. To go as first mate was something he had not had the optimism to hope for.
So he walked with a lighter heart away from the rusty and battered old tub that lay in her launching skids, and crossed the saggy sky port to the portmaster's office where he had left his master's certificate and his dunnage.
"You're crazy--stark, raving crazy," snorted that official, a grizzled veteran of the spaceways whom Hartwell had known for a long time. "The Stellar is a gyp gang and always will be. You'd better chance the fever and the swamp crimps and wait for something safer. I never knew 'em to hire a decent man except to use him as a goat. You may come out of it with your life, but you can bet your last button that you won't come out of it with your reputation."
"I can take care of myself," said Bob Hartwell a little stiffly. He knew that every word his old friend had said was gospel, but then...
"Have you looked over that Hyperion?" stormed the portmaster. "She's hung together with paper clips, sealing wax and baling wire! The underwriters' inspector just certified her for the voyage to Mars, but I'm thinking he's the richer man today on that account--not that his employers know it."
"I've looked at her," said Hartwell, still defensive. "Sure, she's no yacht. But if she stays together long enough for me to get to Mars, that's good enough for me.'
"But the chow, man!" exploded the other. "It's condemned Patrol stores. Even the officers have to pick the weevils out. And speaking of officers, that Fennery and his mate Quorquel are a disgrace to the skylanes. Fennery is a bulldozing old sundowner