* * * * * Nagurski brought out a pipe. He would have a pipe, I decided. "No, not always. I was like you at first. Fresh from the cosmic energy test lab, suspicious of everything, trying to tell the old hands what to do. But I learned that they are pretty smart boys; they know what they are doing. You can rely on them absolutely." I leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Let me tell _you_ a thing, Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less human nature. Even I know that much!" He was pained. "If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav." "They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is _obey_ me or, by Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal back home. Listen," I continued earnestly, "these men aren't going to think of me--of _us_, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this ship." "He _is_ a good man," Nagurski said. "You mustn't be jealous of his status." The dog growled. He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagurski. "Never mind that for now," I said wearily. "What was your idea for getting our exploration parties through this transphasia?" "There's only one idea for that," said Quade, ducking his long head and stepping through the connecting hatch. "With the Captain's permission...." "Go ahead, Quade, tell him," Nagurski invited. "There's only one way to wade through transphasia with any reliability," Quade told me. "You keep some kind of physical contact with the spaceship. Parties are strung out on guide line, like we were, but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hull." "How far can we run it back?" Quade shrugged. "Miles." "How many?" "We have three miles of cable. As long as you can feel, taste, see, smell or hear that rope anchoring you to home, you aren't lost." "Three miles isn't good enough. We don't have enough fuel to change sites that often. You can't use the drive in a gravitational field, you know." "What else can we do, Captain?" Nagurski asked puzzledly. "You've said that the spaceship is our only protection from transphasia. Is that it?" Quade gave a curt nod. "Then," I told them, "we will have to start tearing apart this ship." * * * * * Sergeant-Major Hoffman and his team were doing a good job of ripping out the side of the afterhold. Through the portal I could see the suited men expertly guiding the huge curved sections on their ray projectors. "Cannibalizing is dangerous." Nagurski put his pipe in his teeth and shook his head disapprovingly. "Spaceships have parts as interchangeable as Erector sets. We can take apart the tractors and put our ship back together again after we complete the survey." "You can't assemble a jigsaw puzzle if some of the pieces are missing."