Jubil grimaced wryly. It had been the latter with its advanced mathematics that had been his own downfall. So Kane had gone on to the first officer berth in a gilded passenger liner while Jubil developed radiation scars on his hands from "in the hole" engineering on decrepit freighters. And the great leveller had met and conquered them all.... Schoenbirk, even in the explosion that took his life had accomplished a great thing: the discovery of the final flaw in the De-Fouling Gear that had lived after him. For without proper removal of the ionized waste from its drive engines, the largest freighter became an ever-accumulating and treacherously unstable fissionable pile. Kane--one of the legendary figures of the history of astro-navigation. Kane with his Academy background and his proud but personable air had become one of the most talked-of Space captains who had ever lived. Jubil could still, in memory, see Kane, standing spread-kneed on the bridge of the _Comet_, one of the first; later the _Wanderer_, the first of the luxury space liners. The _Mercury_, and the _Mercury II_, the super-ships that made week-end excursion flights that spanned from galaxy to galaxy. A misplaced decimal point and a misplaced trust and the greatness of Schoenbirk and Kane lay behind them. Even as his drifting body, cumbersome in the space-suit, touched the asteroid, Jubil was aware of a strange weariness that invaded every part of him except his mind. At least, the waning oxygen would leave him his thoughts. He rested, conserving his strength. For what reason? The thing that was to happen was as certain as Fate and as unavoidable by the machinations of man. Was it, after all, because Jubil was prey to anger? No. He was now too near death for anger to seem important. The face of the asteroid was cold and Jubil lay against it, held as lightly as a maiden's kiss by the ounce or so of gravity. He was smiling as the darkness of space was suddenly brilliantly lighted. Spears of bluish flame, each with its tip of crimson, spread across the warp of time, and subconsciously Jubil found himself waiting for the shock wave. Then he laughed. In space there was no atmosphere; he would never be buffeted by the blast that had destroyed the _Mercury II_ and the mutineer Radik. Jubil thought again of the hellish radiation to which he had exposed himself. There was no other way. To destroy the delicate regulating linkage of the Schoenbirk-Halsted, a man must enter the combustion chamber where the pilot-piles idled. There had been just time enough for that, before Radik had sent for him. Had there been ample oxygen, Jubil Marken knew that he would only have lived until his radiation-seared heart painfully failed to function. But, thanks to Radik, Jubil had been spared both the disintegration of the _Mercury II_ and an agonizing death from slow radiation burn.