Then one of the grey bats stirred, drew up its legs, and launched itself off the bulkhead. The others began to move. A laugh rolled in Bailey's throat. Like him, they had only been stunned. They froze the encapsulated dead and patched the hole as best they could and found a clock still running and re-set their instruments, and each man had a souvenir piece of meteor stone, and less than two weeks after this was done the boredom dropped over them again as though excitement had never been. The tension about their mission to Krotzer, tighter from hour to hour only made it worse. They began to hate each other's mannerisms, the way a person scratched an ear or cleared a throat. It's getting you, Bailey, Matt told himself. This way men go nuts. ... _Go nuts, echoed the minds that were him without knowing. Go nuts ... go nuts ... go nuts_ ... * * * * * It was after chow that he did it. He walked over and turned off the television. All kinds of emotions stood on the faces of the others. Rage was the one on the face of a hulking man named Regan. "It was right at the best place!" growled the big spaceman. "Turn it on!" Matt placed himself directly before the screen. "Turn it on yourself!" he baited, with a twisted smile he meant to be lightly humorous. Regan shoved from the wall and floated slowly toward him. "There's a reason for watching this stuff," one of the crewmen put in, "I tell you we've got to watch it! Turn it back on, son." Matt laughed. "What a stinker. The Space Service! Glamour! Commentators and books and slogans and kids and girls all talk about it like a hero carnival but it stinks, it's a bunch of guys going nuts on the other side of nowhere and--" Regan hit him. He flew backward, seeing stars, rolling in the air. DiCredico's voice gonged from the captain's cabin. "Knock it off! Regan, turn the set on, get back to the entertainment. Bailey, want to see you in here." It all went out of Bailey and he felt foolish and frightened. He swung into the cabin and floated at attention. ... _They were all a recruit, frightened before DiCredico_ ... It took DiCredico ten minutes to get through his talk with Bailey, speaking in tough, slicing sentences. The service was no bed of roses, said the skipper, and nobody in the service had ever claimed it was. It was a damned mean racket and nobody asked you to get into it. You volunteered. And you didn't have to stay. Before each voyage you could ask for honorable discharge, or earth duty if available. But once you blasted off, you had to stand the gaff. You had to. There were men who cracked. There were whole crews. If one man lost control, another might, and finally all of them. Nobody knew how many flights were lost through "mental hazard." There were shrewd guesses. Bailey could make the Ranger another missing ship. And they weren't on freight nor patrol--they were on a rescue mission. He should think about that.