"You?"
"You heard about me, captain! You heard about me."
"What about you?"
"You can't wait a month for another auxiliary computator to come
through from Earth. You got to push off tonight, to Jupiter, to get to
your family and the colony and all that, captain, sure!" Nibley was
hasty, he sort of fidgeted around, his voice high, and excited. "An' if
your only computator conks out in the middle of the asteroids, well,
you know what that means. Bang! No more ship! No more you. No more
colony on Jupiter! Now, you know about me, my ability, you know, you
heard."
Kroll was cool and quiet and far away. "I heard about you, old man. I
heard lots. They say you got a funny brain and do things machines can't
do. I don't know. I don't like the idea."
"But you got to like the idea, captain. I'm the only one can help you
now!"
"I don't trust you. I heard about your drinking that time and wrecking
that ship. I remember that."
"But I'm not drinking now. See. Smell my breath, go ahead! You see?"
Kroll stood there. He looked at the ship and he looked at the sky and
then at Nibley. Finally he sighed. "Old man, I'm leaving right now. I
might just as well take you along as leave you. You might do some good.
What can I lose?"
"Not a damned thing, Captain, and you won't be sorry," cried Nibley.
"Step lively, then!"
They went to the Rocket, Kroll running, Nibley hobbling along after.
Trembling excitedly, Nibley stumbled into the Rocket. Everything had a
hot mist over it. First time on a rocket in--ten years, by god. Good.
Good to be aboard again. He smelled it. It smelled fine. It felt fine.
Oh, it was very fine indeed. First time since that trouble he got into
off the planet Venus ... he brushed that thought away. That was over
and past.
He followed Kroll up through the ship to a small room in the prow.
Men ran up and down the rungs. Men who had families out there on
Jupiter and were willing to go through the asteroids with a faulty
radar set-up to reach those families and bring them the necessary cargo
of machinery and food they needed to go on.
Out of a warm mist, old Nibley heard himself being introduced to a
third man in the small room.
"Douglas, this is Nibley, our auxiliary computating machine."
"A poor time for joking, Captain."
"It's no joke," cried Nibley. "Here I am."
Douglas eyed Nibley with a very cold and exact eye. "No," he said. "No.
I can't use him. I'm computant-mechanic."
"And I'm captain," said Kroll.
Douglas looked at Kroll. "We'll shove through to Jupiter with just our
leaky set of radar-computators; that's the way it'll have to be. If
we're wrecked halfway, well, we're wrecked. But I'll be damned if I go
along with a decrepit son-of-a-witch-doctor!"
Nibley's eyes watered. He sucked in on himself. There was a pain round
his heart and he was suddenly chilled.
Kroll started to speak, but a gong rattled and banged and a voice
shouted, "Stations! Gunners up! Hammocks! Takeoff!"
"_Takeoff!_"
"Stay here!" Kroll snapped it at the old man. He leaped away and down
the rungs of the ladder, leaving Nibley alone in the broad shadow
of the bitter-eyed Douglas. Douglas looked him up and down in surly
contempt. "So you know arcs, parabolas and orbits as good as my
machines, do you?"
Nibley nodded, angry now that Kroll was gone:
"Machines," shrilled Nibley. "Can't do everything! They ain't got no
intuition. Can't understand sabotage and hatreds and arguments. Or
people. Machines're too damn slow!"