And he could not help but feel a pang when the young humanoid expired in his arms, murmuring, "Do not grieve for me, soul-mates. In the midst of life, there is life...." "Funny," Smullyan said, with one of his disconcerting returns to a professional manner, "all the other forms seemed perfectly healthy. Why did this one go like that? Almost as if he _wanted_ to die." "He was too good for this ship, that's what," the radio operator said, glaring at the captain. "Too fine and brave and--and noble." "Yes," Harkaway agreed. "What truly sensitive soul could exist in a stultifying atmosphere like this?" All the officers glared at the captain. He glared back with right good will. "How come you gentlemen are still with us?" he inquired. "One would have thought you would have perished of pure sensibility long since, then." "It's not nice to talk that way," the chief petty officer burst out, "not with him lying there not yet cold.... Ah," he heaved a long sigh, "we'll never see his like again." "Ay, that we won't," agreed the crew, huddled in the corridor outside the captain's cabin. Iversen sincerely hoped not, but he forbore to speak. * * * * * Since Bridey had reached the ultimate point in his life cycle, it seemed certain that he was not going to change into anything else and so he was given a spaceman's burial. Feeling like a put-upon fool, Captain Iversen read a short prayer as Bridey's slight body was consigned to the vast emptiness of space. Then the airlock clanged shut behind the last mortal remains of the ill-fated extraterrestrial and that was the end of it. But the funereal atmosphere did not diminish as the ship forged on toward Earth. Gloomy days passed, one after the other, during which no one spoke, save to issue or dispute an order. Looking at himself one day in the mirror on his cabin wall, the captain realized that he was getting old. Perhaps he ought to retire instead of still dreaming of a new command and a new crew. And then one day, as he sat in his cabin reading the Spaceman's Credo, the lights on the _Herringbone_ went out, all at once, while the constant hum of the motors died down slowly, leaving a strange, uncomfortable silence. Iversen found himself suspended weightless in the dark, for the gravity, of course, had gone off with the power. What, he wondered, had come to pass? He often found himself thinking in such terms these days. Hoarse cries issued from the passageway outside; then he heard a squeak as his cabin door opened and persons unknown floated inside, breathing heavily. "The power has failed, sir!" gasped the first officer's voice. "That has not escaped my notice," Iversen said icily. Were not even his last moments to be free from persecution? "It's all that maniac Smullyan's fault. He stored his _mk'oog_ in the fuel tanks. After emptying them out first, that is. We're out of fuel."