Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HAPPY HERD BY BRYCE WALTON _Everyone was thoughtful, considerate, kind and very happy. But where was the right of dignity or individuality? It was like being dropped into the middle of a nightmare. The kind that finds you running naked in a crowd._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The Captain told Kane to take his cushion pills, that they were contacting the pits at La Guardia within half an hour. "I still can't figure you," the Captain said. "Up there, just you and your wife for sixteen years. That's a hell of a long time." Kane smiled. He had been almost completely out of touch with the world for sixteen years, and it surprised him a little that anyone thought it remarkable in any way. Particularly the Captain who spent most of his time, too, alone. But the Captain was genuinely perturbed about it. The authorities had abandoned the space-station project. Abandoned the Martian project. They had taken away the other three ships from the Moon-run, and there was no explanation for it at all. The rest of the Captain's crew, except an old atomics man, had drifted away and never come back, and the Captain had been unable to find out anything whatsoever about what had happened to them. He had never heard from them again. They had never been replaced. But the Captain couldn't seem to define what it was he was warning Kane to be wary of down there. "I haven't left my ship for years, Professor Kane, and that's the truth. I take on supplies and see to the ore getting into the holds but when those machines up there that do the digging and loading wear out, they won't be replaced. Just no interest in space any more. I can tell. "I stay on the ship, with my wife, see. And the few guys down there around the field at La Guardia I have to rub up against--why, sir, they treat me as if I had some kind of contagious disease! "But they need this ore I'm bringing back here now, so they leave me alone." "Who leaves you alone?" "Whoever didn't leave the rest of my crew alone. Whoever sang 'em the old siren song, that's who. Once a spaceman, always a spaceman, sir. And not a one of those men pulled out because he wanted to do it! That's what I'm saying. And I'm telling you to watch out. I'm blasting off for the Moon again on the 25th. I hope you're aboard." Kane shrugged as the Captain bowed out, making disgruntled noises in his throat. He was getting along in years, Kane reasoned, and was probably just expressing that fact, externalizing some way or another. Still, what he had said was odd--