"And I'm captain," said Kroll. Douglas looked at Kroll. "We'll shove through to Jupiter with just our leaky set of radar-computators; that's the way it'll have to be. If we're wrecked halfway, well, we're wrecked. But I'll be damned if I go along with a decrepit son-of-a-witch-doctor!" Nibley's eyes watered. He sucked in on himself. There was a pain round his heart and he was suddenly chilled. Kroll started to speak, but a gong rattled and banged and a voice shouted, "Stations! Gunners up! Hammocks! Takeoff!" "_Takeoff!_" "Stay here!" Kroll snapped it at the old man. He leaped away and down the rungs of the ladder, leaving Nibley alone in the broad shadow of the bitter-eyed Douglas. Douglas looked him up and down in surly contempt. "So you know arcs, parabolas and orbits as good as my machines, do you?" Nibley nodded, angry now that Kroll was gone: "Machines," shrilled Nibley. "Can't do everything! They ain't got no intuition. Can't understand sabotage and hatreds and arguments. Or people. Machines're too damn slow!" Douglas lidded his eyes. "You--_you're_ faster?" "I'm faster," said Nibley. Douglas flicked his cigarette toward a wall-disposal slot. "Predict that orbit!" Nibley's eyes jerked. "Gonna miss it!" The cigarette lay smouldering on the deck. Douglas scowled at the cigarette. Nibley made wheezy laughter. He minced to his shock-hammock, zipped into it. "Not bad, not bad, eh?" The ship rumbled. Angrily, Douglas snatched up the cigarette, carried it to his own hammock, rolled in, zipped the zipper, then, deliberately, he flicked the cigarette once more. It flew. "Another miss," predicted Nibley. Douglas was still glaring at the floored cigarette when the Rocket burst gravity and shot up into space toward the asteroids. * * * * * Mars dwindled into the sun. Asteroids swept silently down the star-tracks, all metal, all invisible, shifting and shifting to harry the Rocket-- Nibley sprawled by the great thick visiport feeling the computators giving him competition under the floor in the level below, predicting meteors and correcting the Terra's course accordingly. Douglas stood behind Nibley, stiff and quiet. Since he was computant-mechanic, Nibley was his charge. He was to protect Nibley from harm. Kroll had said so. Douglas didn't like it at all. Nibley was feeling fine. It was like the old days. It was good. He laughed. He waved at nothing outside the port. "Hi, there!" he called. "Meteor," he explained in an aside to Douglas. "You see it?" "Lives at stake and you sit there playing." "Nope. Not playin'. Just warmin' up. I can see 'em beatin' like hell all up and down the line, son. God's truth." "Kroll's a damned fool," said Douglas. "Sure, you had a few lucky breaks in the old days before they built a good computator. A few lucky breaks and you lived off them. Your day's done." "I'm _still_ good."