The name was David Markham. He was _the_ David Markham all right, the Dispatcher said when I asked him--the one who was kicked out of Space Patrol for abject cowardice. The Dispatcher told me the man had been trying for two years to get back into space, the Union wouldn't take him, and the only way he could get into service was an orderly to a Captain--if any Captain took him. The Dispatcher suggested two or three other men he knew personally, any one of which I would probably like and decide to keep permanently. But a crazy idea was running around in my head. It was a clutching at straws, but what it amounted to was this: I had a bully on my crew, a man who had my number and knew how to use it. Why not balance him out by making my one choice on the crew a man who was the exact opposite, an abject coward? Possibly, on some level of thought, I wanted company if Resnick showed me up to the crew, someone who couldn't look down on me because of the simple fact that he was the lowest there was. The Dispatcher almost cried with happiness over my choice of David Markham. It turned out he was sorry for the guy, and felt only a man with real guts would have the courage to sign Markham on. He would certainly have been surprised if I had told him the truth. I met Markham the next morning at seven o'clock when I returned to the Dispatch Office at Spaceport, New Mexico. He was a fine looking fellow, twenty-five, rather short--just over the six foot four minimum of the Space Patrol, about one ninety mass, blonde, square jaw. I took a liking to him at once--but there was a haunting something at the back of his eyes that never went away even when he was smiling, and he smiled often during the time I knew him, though he never laughed but once--and it was a sound I never want to hear again. But that came much later. I sent him aboard with my bags to get my quarters in order, then steeled myself to check in the crew. You know how it is, you sit at the window and the men come by, one at a time, you introduce yourself, fix his face in your mind, size him up, then call for the next man. Finally it was Oscar Resnick looking through the window at me, his thick shock of sandy red hair glued down, clean-shaven, six foot eight, about two hundred and forty pounds mass, his brown eyes a little too large, his thin lipped mouth a little too small, his teeth a little too long.