Burnet, his normally ruddy face white, reared to his feet:
"No!" he shouted. "You're wrong, Herd. He was pardoned. I know. They
found he had nothing to do with the kidnaping."
"Maybe so," Charlie Herd, assistant pilot said, still apologetically.
"But I know I took him to the Rock--and I didn't hear anything after
that about him. But he's the same guy.
"He was a wild one," Herd said almost dreamily. "He knocked out two of
the guards, grabbed one of the chutes and was almost out of the ship
before I rolled the crate over and bashed him against the cabin wall."
Whitey Burnet's face was still white. "Look," he said. "I don't like
Joe, but it's something personal. The tribunal found him innocent, so
why not give him a chance?"
Arden turned to Joe who still stood by the side of the door, his
handsome bronzed face stiff.
"Well?" Arden asked.
Joe smiled. He said, looking at the red-headed Herd:
"You're right as far as you went. I was taken to the Rock. I did try
to break loose. The tribunal found me not guilty and apologized. I was
released. And here I am."
Herd looked back at Joe, and then he smiled, half-apologetically:
"I'll take you at face value. You look all right."
"Thanks," Joe said.
Bob and Ronnie Guetschow, the bulky professor twins, broke the ensuing
silence with:
"Come on and eat." The ice broke silently. Arden motioned Joe toward an
empty chair at the table. Joe moved forward, then stopped as his eyes
counted the men at the table.
"Sit down, Joe," Arden grunted, picking himself a convenient, padded
chair.
Surprisingly, Joe shook his head. "No," he said, and for the first time
he looked embarrassed. There was a slight flush under his tan.
The table talk stopped again. George Keating, the thin, wiry electrical
engineer, said half-jokingly:
"Afraid you'll get contaminated?"
Joe's tan skin lost its red of embarrassment, twisted strangely.
"Sorry," put in Keating hastily. "Only joking."
Joe swallowed. Then: "I'm just superstitious, I guess." The words
rushed out. "If I sit down, that'll make thirteen."
* * * * *
Ed Parman, black-haired assistant to Black Tom, jumped hastily to
his feet. "Good gravy, he's right. You sit down, Joe, I'll finish my
pudding in the corner."
Joe said: "Sit down. I'm used to discomfort. I'm a wooder." He grinned.
Parman grinned back, started in on his pudding.
Joe, the men were to notice in the coming days, seemed to make a point
of never eating with the bunch after that. But he did it so smoothly,
it wasn't offensive....
Venus, in the days that followed, grew from a tiny yellow-green flame,
that Bairn, the pilot, had noticed in the first hours of the flight,
to a white globe, just hinting a tint of blue, that began to fill the
heavens before him.
Joe, on an off hour from the power room, sat quietly in the co-pilot's
chair, drinking in the planet. He and Bairn, usually so taciturn, had
talked much in the days of the flight.
This day, when Joe came in, Bairn looked at him with a strange twist
to his mouth. He said nothing for quite a while, the two just sitting
there, Joe looking up and ahead, Bairn, apparently preoccupied with
figures on his charts.
Finally Bairn said:
"Has Arden said anything to you?"