The Stoker and the Stars | Page 4

the last part in a Master's voice. Daniels
didn't ask questions. He sent a man on his way down.
He'd been singing, the stoker had. He'd been singing while he worked
with one arm dead, one sleeve ripped open and badly patched because
the fabric was slippery with blood. There'd been a flashover in the
drivers. By the time his relief got down there, he had the insulation
back on, and the drive was purring along the way it should have been.
It hadn't even missed a beat.

He went down to sick bay, got the arm wrapped, and would have gone
back on shift if Daniels'd let him.
Those of us who were going off shift found him toying with the
theremin in the mess compartment. He didn't know how to play it, and
it sounded like a dog howling.
"Sing, will you!" somebody yelled. He grinned and went back to the
"Good Ship Venus." It wasn't good, but it was loud. From that, we went
to "Starways, Farways, and Barways," and "The Freefall Song."
Somebody started "I Left Her Behind For You," and that got us off into
sentimental things, the way these sessions would sometimes wind up
when spacemen were far from home. But not since the war, we all
seemed to realize together. We stopped, and looked at each other, and
we all began drifting out of the mess compartment.
And maybe it got to him, too. It may explain something. He and I were
the last to leave. We went to the bunkroom, and he stopped in the
middle of taking off his shirt. He stood there, looking out the porthole,
and forgot I was there. I heard him reciting something, softly, under his
breath, and I stepped a little closer. This is what it was:
"The rockets rise against the skies, Slowly; in sunlight gleaming With
silver hue upon the blue. And the universe waits, dreaming.
"For men must go where the flame-winds blow, The gas clouds softly
plaiting; Where stars are spun and worlds begun, And men will find
them waiting.
"The song that roars where the rocket soars Is the song of the stellar
flame; The dreams of Man and galactic span Are equal and much the
same."
What was he thinking of? Make your own choice. I think I came close
to knowing him, at that moment, but until human beings turn telepath,
no man can be sure of another.
He shook himself like a dog out of cold water, and got into his bunk. I

got into mine, and after a while I fell asleep.
* * * * *
I don't know what MacReidie may have told the skipper about the
stoker, or if he tried to tell him anything. The captain was the senior
ticket holder in the Merchant Service, and a good man, in his day. He
kept mostly to his cabin. And there was nothing MacReidie could do on
his own authority--nothing simple, that is. And the stoker had saved the
ship, and ...
I think what kept anything from happening between MacReidie and the
stoker, or anyone else and the stoker, was that it would have meant
trouble in the ship. Trouble, confined to our little percentage of the
ship's volume, could seem like something much more important than
the fate of the human race. It may not seem that way to you. But as
long as no one began anything, we could all get along. We could have a
good trip.
MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I worried, sometimes. But nothing
happened.
When we reached Alpha Centaurus, and set down at the trading field on
the second planet, it was the same as the other trips we'd made, and the
same kind of landfall. The Lud factor came out of his post after we'd
waited for a while, and gave us our permit to disembark. There was a
Jek ship at the other end of the field, loaded with the cargo we would
get in exchange for our holdful of goods. We had the usual things; wine,
music tapes, furs, and the like. The Jeks had been giving us light
machinery lately--probably we'd get two or three more loads, and then
they'd begin giving us something else.
But I found that this trip wasn't quite the same. I found myself looking
at the factor's post, and I realized for the first time that the Lud hadn't
built it. It was a leftover from the old colonial human government. And
the city on the horizon--men had built it; the touch of our architecture
was on every building. I wondered why it had never occurred to me
that this was so. It made the landfall different from all the others,

somehow. It gave a new face to the entire planet.