Burnet, his normally ruddy face white, reared to his feet: "No!" he shouted. "You're wrong, Herd. He was pardoned. I know. They found he had nothing to do with the kidnaping." "Maybe so," Charlie Herd, assistant pilot said, still apologetically. "But I know I took him to the Rock--and I didn't hear anything after that about him. But he's the same guy. "He was a wild one," Herd said almost dreamily. "He knocked out two of the guards, grabbed one of the chutes and was almost out of the ship before I rolled the crate over and bashed him against the cabin wall." Whitey Burnet's face was still white. "Look," he said. "I don't like Joe, but it's something personal. The tribunal found him innocent, so why not give him a chance?" Arden turned to Joe who still stood by the side of the door, his handsome bronzed face stiff. "Well?" Arden asked. Joe smiled. He said, looking at the red-headed Herd: "You're right as far as you went. I was taken to the Rock. I did try to break loose. The tribunal found me not guilty and apologized. I was released. And here I am." Herd looked back at Joe, and then he smiled, half-apologetically: "I'll take you at face value. You look all right." "Thanks," Joe said. Bob and Ronnie Guetschow, the bulky professor twins, broke the ensuing silence with: "Come on and eat." The ice broke silently. Arden motioned Joe toward an empty chair at the table. Joe moved forward, then stopped as his eyes counted the men at the table. "Sit down, Joe," Arden grunted, picking himself a convenient, padded chair. Surprisingly, Joe shook his head. "No," he said, and for the first time he looked embarrassed. There was a slight flush under his tan. The table talk stopped again. George Keating, the thin, wiry electrical engineer, said half-jokingly: "Afraid you'll get contaminated?" Joe's tan skin lost its red of embarrassment, twisted strangely. "Sorry," put in Keating hastily. "Only joking." Joe swallowed. Then: "I'm just superstitious, I guess." The words rushed out. "If I sit down, that'll make thirteen." * * * * * Ed Parman, black-haired assistant to Black Tom, jumped hastily to his feet. "Good gravy, he's right. You sit down, Joe, I'll finish my pudding in the corner." Joe said: "Sit down. I'm used to discomfort. I'm a wooder." He grinned. Parman grinned back, started in on his pudding. Joe, the men were to notice in the coming days, seemed to make a point of never eating with the bunch after that. But he did it so smoothly, it wasn't offensive.... Venus, in the days that followed, grew from a tiny yellow-green flame, that Bairn, the pilot, had noticed in the first hours of the flight, to a white globe, just hinting a tint of blue, that began to fill the heavens before him. Joe, on an off hour from the power room, sat quietly in the co-pilot's chair, drinking in the planet. He and Bairn, usually so taciturn, had talked much in the days of the flight.