Aimes glowered at the others from under grizzled eyebrows. Of them all, the linguodynamicist took part in the fewest arguments and apparently detested the others most. He turned his heavy body now as he studied them, seemingly trying to make up his mind which he detested most at the moment. Then he grunted. "With you, Captain," Aimes said curtly. He swung on his heel and stalked out of the control cabin, to go back to studying the undeciphered writing of the planets they had visited. Graves let out a single hiss and followed, probably heading for the galley, since it was his period to cook. Jeremy waited deliberately until the minerologist's footsteps could no longer be heard, and then turned to leave. Lenk hesitated for a second, then decided that monotony was worse than anything else. "How about some chess, Jeremy?" he asked. The other stopped, and some of the sullenness left his face. Apparently the protracted arguments had wearied him until he was also feeling the relief of decisive action. "Why not?" Jeremy said. "I'll set up the board while you fiddle with your dials." No fiddling was necessary, since Lenk had never cut them off their automatic detecting circuit, but he went through the motions for the other's benefit. Gravitic strain came faintly through hyperspace, and the ship could locate suns by it. If approach revealed planets of habitable size, it was set to snap out of hyperspace automatically near the most likely world. Lenk had been afraid such a solar system might be found before they could resolve the argument, and his own relief from the full measure of cabin fever came from the end of that possibility. They settled down to the game with a minimum of conversation. Since the other four members of the crew had been killed by some unknown virus, conversation had proven less than cheerful. It was better when they were on a planet and busy, but four people were too few for the monotony of hypertravel. Then Jeremy snapped out of it. He cleared his throat tentatively while castling, grimaced, and then nodded positively. "I was right, Lenk. We never did explore those other planets properly." "Maybe not," Lenk agreed. "But with the possibility of alien raiders headed toward Earth...." "Bunk! No sign of raiders. Every indication was that the races on those worlds killed themselves off--no technology alien to their own culture. And there would have been with aliens invading." "Time that way? Coincidence can account for just so much." "It has to account for the lowering cultural levels in the colonizing direction," Jeremy said curtly. "Better leave that sort of argument to Aimes. He's conditioned to it." Lenk shrugged and turned back to the chess. It was over his head, anyhow.