"I'll stoke."
MacReidie looked over toward me and frowned. I shrugged my shoulders
helplessly. I was a little afraid of the stranger, too.
The trouble was the look of him. It was the look you saw in the bars
back on Earth, where the veterans of the war sat and stared down into
their glasses, waiting for night to fall so they could go out into the
alleys and have drunken fights among themselves. But he had brought that
look to Mars, to the landing field, and out here there was something
disquieting about it.
He'd caught Mac's look and turned his head to me. "I'll stoke," he
repeated.
I didn't know what to say. MacReidie and I--almost all of the men in the
Merchant Marine--hadn't served in the combat arms. We had freighted
supplies, and we had seen ships dying on the runs--we'd had our own
brushes with commerce raiders, and we'd known enough men who joined the
combat forces. But very few of the men came back, and the war this man
had fought hadn't been the same as ours. He'd commanded a fighting ship,
somewhere, and come to grips with things we simply didn't know about.
The mark was on him, but not on us. I couldn't meet his eyes. "O.K. by
me," I mumbled at last.
I saw MacReidie's mouth turn down at the corners. But he couldn't
gainsay the man any more than I could. MacReidie wasn't a mumbling man,
so he said angrily: "O.K., bucko, you'll stoke. Go and sign on."
"Thanks." The stranger walked quietly away. He wrapped a hand around the
cable on a cargo hook and rode into the hold on top of some freight. Mac
spat on the ground and went back to supervising his end of the loading.
I was busy with mine, and it wasn't until we'd gotten the _Serenus_
loaded and buttoned up that Mac and I even spoke to each other again.
Then we talked about the trip. We didn't talk about the stranger.
* * * * *
Daniels, the Third, had signed him on and had moved him into the empty
bunk above mine. We slept all in a bunch on the _Serenus_--officers and
crew. Even so, we had to sleep in shifts, with the ship's designers
giving ninety per cent of her space to cargo, and eight per cent to
power and control. That left very little for the people, who were
crammed in any way they could be. I said empty bunk. What I meant was,
empty during my sleep shift. That meant he and I'd be sharing work
shifts--me up in the control blister, parked in a soft chair, and him
down in the engine room, broiling in a suit for twelve hours.
But I ate with him, used the head with him; you can call that rubbing
elbows with greatness, if you want to.
He was a very quiet man. Quiet in the way he moved and talked. When we
were both climbing into our bunks, that first night, I introduced myself
and he introduced himself. Then he heaved himself into his bunk, rolled
over on his side, fixed his straps, and fell asleep. He was always
friendly toward me, but he must have been very tired that first night. I
often wondered what kind of a life he'd lived after the war--what he'd
done that made him different from the men who simply grew older in the
bars. I wonder, now, if he really did do anything different. In an odd
way, I like to think that one day, in a bar, on a day that seemed like
all the rest to him when it began, he suddenly looked up with some new
thought, put down his glass, and walked straight to the Earth-Mars
shuttle field.
He might have come from any town on Earth. Don't believe the historians
too much. Don't pay too much attention to the Chamber of Commerce
plaques. When a man's name becomes public property, strange things
happen to the facts.
* * * * *
It was MacReidie who first found out what he'd done during the war.
I've got to explain about MacReidie. He takes his opinions fast and
strong. He's a good man--is, or was; I haven't seen him for a long
while--but he liked things simple.
MacReidie said the duffelbag broke loose and floated into the middle of
the bunkroom during acceleration. He opened it to see whose it was. When
he found out, he closed it up and strapped it back in its place at the
foot of the stoker's bunk.
MacReidie was my relief on the bridge. When he came up, he didn't
relieve me right away. He stood next to my chair and looked out through
the ports.
"Captain leave any special instructions in the Order Book?" he asked.
"Just the usual. Keep a tight watch and proceed cautiously."
"That new stoker," Mac said.
"Yeah?"
"I knew there was something wrong with him. He's got an old Marine
uniform in his duffel."