MORLEY'S WEAPON By D. W. BAREFOOT _Out of the far reaches of the universe sped the meteor swarm, cosmic question marks destined for annihilation in the sun. But one, approximately half a pound of frozen destruction, had a rendezvous near Japetus with Spaceboat 6._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It was comfortably cool in the functional, little control room, but Morley was sweating, gently and steadily. His palms were wet, and the thin thoughtful face, shining in the glow of the instrument panel light, was wrinkled in an agony of concentration and doubt. He was trying to choose between the Scylla of waking Madsen with a corollary of biting contempt involved, and the Charybdis of attempting to land single handed on Japetus, less than five hundred miles below. Neither course was appealing. For the hundredth time he pondered miserably over the sad condition of what had been a reasonably well ordered existence. The worst of it was that he had only himself to blame, and he knew it. No one had forced him to leave a comfortable, if poorly paid position with General Plastics, and fill out an employment card at Satellites, Inc. He could not explain the obscure compulsion that sparked his little personal rebellion. He didn't know, or need to know that other generations of Morleys had fought in revolutions, or sailed in square riggers, or clawed gold from mountainsides. When he went to the spaceline, the puzzlement of his few friends was profound, but hardly more so than his own. And now, after almost a year of upheaval and change, he was piloting a spaceboat along an involute curve ending on the surface of Saturn's eighth moon. And he was still puzzled. Satellites, Inc., had done as well as possible with the raw material known as Morley, Vincent, No. 4628. His psychograph indicated a born subordinate, with a normal I.Q., reasonably stable and trustworthy though below average in initiative. They didn't inform him of this, or the fact that they had analyzed the neurosis which had driven him to the spaceline, and which had created by that very action the therapeutic aid he needed. Many spacemen had similar case histories. It was those who fought the compulsion who sometimes turned down dark pathways of the mind. For six months he attended cadet school, and graduated in due time, fourteenth in a class of fifty. The next day he was assigned as fourth engineman to the space freighter _Solarian_, bound to Port Ulysses, Titan, Saturn system, with a cargo of mining machinery and supplies. * * * * *