The stoker was coming down on one of the cargo slings. He stood upright,
his booted feet planted wide, one arm curled up over his head and around
the hoist cable. He was in his dusty brown Marine uniform, the scarlet
collar tabs bright as blood at his throat, his major's insignia
glittering at his shoulders, the battle stripes on his sleeves.
The Jeks stopped their lifts. They knew that uniform. They sat up in
their saddles and watched him come down. When the sling touched the
ground, he jumped off quietly and walked toward the nearest Jek. They
all followed him with their eyes.
"We've got to stop him," Mac said, and both of us started toward him.
His hands were both in plain sight, one holding his duffelbag, which was
swelled out with the bulk of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a weapon of
any kind. He was walking casually, taking his time.
Mac and I had almost reached him when a Jek with insignia on his
coveralls suddenly jumped down from his lift and came forward to meet
him. It was an odd thing to see--the stoker, and the Jek, who did not
stand as tall. MacReidie and I stepped back.
The Jek was coal black, his scales glittering in the cold sunlight, his
hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped when the stoker was a few paces
away. The stoker stopped, too. All the Jeks were watching him and paying
no attention to anything else. The field might as well have been empty
except for those two.
"They'll kill him. They'll kill him right now," MacReidie whispered.
They ought to have. If I'd been a Jek, I would have thought that uniform
was a death warrant. But the Jek spoke to him:
"Are you entitled to wear that?"
"I was at this planet in '39. I was closer to your home world the year
before that," the stoker said. "I was captain of a destroyer. If I'd had
a cruiser's range, I would have reached it." He looked at the Jek.
"Where were you?"
"I was here when you were."
"I want to speak to your ship's captain."
"All right. I'll drive you over."
The stoker nodded, and they walked over to his vehicle together. They
drove away, toward the Jek ship.
"All right, let's get back to work," another Jek said to MacReidie and
myself, and we went back to unloading cargo.
* * * * *
The stoker came back to our ship that night, without his duffelbag. He
found me and said:
"I'm signing off the ship. Going with the Jeks."
MacReidie was with me. He said loudly: "What do you mean, you're going
with the Jeks?"
"I signed on their ship," the stoker said. "Stoking. They've got a
micro-nuclear drive. It's been a while since I worked with one, but I
think I'll make out all right, even with the screwball way they've got
it set up."
"Huh?"
The stoker shrugged. "Ships are ships, and physics is physics, no matter
where you go. I'll make out."
"What kind of a deal did you make with them? What do you think you're up
to?"
The stoker shook his head. "No deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll do a
crewman's work for a crewman's wages. I thought I'd wander around a
while. It ought to be interesting," he said.
"On a Jek ship."
"Anybody's ship. When I get to their home world, I'll probably ship out
with some people from farther on. Why not? It's honest work."
MacReidie had no answer to that.
"But--" I said.
"What?" He looked at me as if he couldn't understand what might be
bothering me, but I think perhaps he could.
"Nothing," I said, and that was that, except MacReidie was always a
sourer man from that time up to as long as I knew him afterwards. We
took off in the morning. The stoker had already left on the Jek ship,
and it turned out he'd trained an apprentice boy to take his place.
* * * * *
It was strange how things became different for us, little by little
after that. It was never anything you could put your finger on, but the
Jeks began taking more goods, and giving us things we needed when we
told them we wanted them. After a while, _Serenus_ was going a little
deeper into Jek territory, and when she wore out, the two replacements
let us trade with the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey, and other
people beyond them, and things just got better for us, somehow.
We heard about our stoker, occasionally. He shipped with the Lud, and
the Nosurwey, and some people beyond them, getting along, going to all
kinds of places. Pay no attention to the precise red lines you see on
the star maps; nobody knows exactly what path he wandered from people to
people. Nobody could. He just kept signing on with whatever ship was
going deeper into the galaxy, going farther and farther. He messed with
green shipmates and blue ones. One and two and three heads, tails, six
legs--after all, ships are ships and they've all got to have something
to push them along. If a man knows his business, why not? A man can live
on all kinds of food, if he wants to get used to it. And any nontoxic
atmosphere will do, as long as there's enough oxygen in it.
I don't know what he did, to make things so much better for us. I don't
know if he did anything, but stoke their ships and, I suppose, fix them
when they were in trouble. I wonder if he sang dirty songs in that bad
voice of his, to people who couldn't possibly understand what the songs
were about. All I know is, for some reason those people slowly began
treating us with respect. We changed, too, I think--I'm not the same
man I was ... I think--not altogether the same; I'm a captain now, with
master's papers, and you won't find me in my cabin very often ...
there's a kind of joy in standing on a bridge, looking out at the stars
you're moving toward. I wonder if it mightn't have kept my old captain
out of that place he died in, finally, if he'd tried it.
So, I don't know. The older I get, the less I know. The thing people
remember the stoker for--the thing that makes him famous, and, I think,
annoys him--I'm fairly sure is only incidental to what he really did. If
he did anything. If he meant to. I wish I could be sure of the exact
answer he found in the bottom of that last glass at the bar before he
worked his passage to Mars and the _Serenus_, and began it all.
So, I can't say what he ought to be famous for. But I suppose it's
enough to know for sure that he was the first living being ever to
travel all the way around the galaxy.