"You can't get a complete picture, but you can get a good idea of what it looks like. We can take off in a reasonable facsimile of a spaceship." "Not," he persisted, "if _too_ many parts are missing." "Nagurski, if you are looking for a job safer than space exploration, why don't you go back to testing cosmic bomb shelters?" Nagurski flushed. "Look here, Captain, you are being too damned cautious. There is a way one handles the survey of a planet like this, and this isn't the way." "It's my way. You heard what Quade said. You know it yourself. The men have to have something tangible to hang onto out there. One slender cable isn't enough of an edge on sensory anarchy. If the product of their own technological civilization can keep them sane, I say let 'em take a part of that environment with them." "In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust, you are risking more than a few men--you risk the whole mission in gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that!" "I never said I wouldn't take chances. But I'm not going to take _stupid_ chances. I _might_ be doing the wrong thing, but I can see you _would_ be doing it wrong." "You know nothing about space, Captain! You have to trust _us_." "That's it exactly, First Officer Nagurski," I said sociably. "If you lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I know it _has_ to be wrong." I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway. "Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?" "I would," I answered levelly. "Then you'll be interested to hear that Spaceman Quade took a suit and a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere, alone." "The idiot!" I yelped. "Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it." "He didn't hook on a cable, Captain," Wallace said. "I suppose he intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded." "Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what I said as long as I command this spacer." "Cool off, Gav," Nagurski advised me. "It's been done before. Anybody else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him." "I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him." * * * * * For me, it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw and ruin a gem. Now I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a man, not a stone, because I had missed the flaw.