Mission of Gravity

And the Bree would have had a new captain. Respect for his courage was the only thing that had driven that crew into the storm-breeding regions of the Rim. If that went, he would have no crew and no ship — and, for all practical purpose, no life. A coward was not tolerated on any oceangoing ship in any capacity; and while his homeland was on this same continental mass, the idea of traversing forty thousand miles of coastline on foot was not to be considered.

These thoughts did not cross his conscious mind in detail, but his instinctive knowledge of the facts effectually silenced him while Lackland picked up the radios and, with McLellan, entered the tank below the Mesklinite. The metal under him quivered slightly as the door was closed, and an instant later the vehicle started to move. As it did so, a peculiar thing happened to its nonhuman passenger.

The fear might have — perhaps should have — driven him mad. His situation can only be dimly approximated by comparing it with that of a human being hanging by one hand from a window ledge forty stories above a paved street.

And yet he did not go mad. At least, he did not go mad in the accepted sense; he continued to reason as well as ever, and none of his friends could have detected a change in his personality. For just a little while, perhaps, an Earthman more familiar with Mesklinites than Lackland had yet become might have suspected that the commander was a little drunk; but even that passed.

And the fear passed with it. Nearly six body lengths above the ground, he found himself crouched almost calmly. He was holding tightly, of course; he even remembered, later, reflecting how lucky it was that the wind had continued to drop, even though the smooth metal offered an unusually good grip for his sucker-feet. It was amazing, the viewpoint that could be enjoyed — yes, he enjoyed it — from such a position. Looking down on things really helped; you could get a remarkably complete picture of so much ground at once. It was like a map; and Barle

An almost intoxicating sense of triumph filled him as the crawler approached the rocket and stopped. The Mesklinite waved his pincers almost gaily at the emerging McLellan visible in the reflected glare of the tank’s lights, and was disproportionately pleased when the man waved back. The tank immediately turned to the left and headed for the beach where the Bree lay; Mack, remembering that Barle

Lackland had been watching too; but when the last glint of metal had disappeared, he lost no further time in driving the tank the short remaining distance to where the Bree lay. He stopped a hundred yards from the vessel, but he was quite close enough for the shocked creatures on the decks to see their commander perched on the vehicle’s roof. It would have been less disconcerting had Lackland approached bearing Barle

Even Dondragmer, the most intelligent and levelheaded of the Breeds complement — not excepting his captain — was paralyzed for long moments; and his first motion was with eyes only, taking the form of a wistful glance toward the flame-dust tanks and „shakers” on the outer rafts. Fortunately for Barle

A faint rumble of anger began to arise from the assembled crew as the door of the crawler opened and Lackland’s armored figure emerged. Their half-trading, half-piratical way of life had left among them only those most willing to fight without hesitation at the slightest hint of menace to one of their number; the cowards had dropped away long since, and the individualists had died. The only thing that saved Lack-land’s life as he emerged into their view was habit — the conditioning that prevented their making the hundred-yard leap that would have cost the weakest of them the barest flick of his body muscles. Crawling as they had done all their lives, they flowed from the rafts like a red and black waterfall and spread over the beach toward the alien machine. Lackland saw them coming, of course, but so completely misunderstood their motivation that he did not even hurry as he reached up to the crawler’s roof, picked up Barle

Barle

„Calm down!” Actually Barle

„But you forbade — ”

„We thought — ”

„You were high — ” A chorus of objections answered the captain, who cut them short.

„I know I forbade such actions, and I told you why. When we return to high-weight and decent living we must have no habits that might result in our thoughtlessly doing dangerous things like that — ” He waved a pincer-tipped arm upward toward the tank’s roof. „You all know what proper weight can do; the Flyer doesn’t. He put me up there, as you saw him take me down, without even thinking about it. He comes from a place where there is practically no weight at all; where, I believe, he could fall many times his body length without being hurt. You can see that for yourselves: if he felt properly about high places, how could he fly?”

Most of Barle