"Are your officers here?" I asked in surprise, still unsuspicious.

  "This is the place they said," the flunky replied with-out any form of respect again, but I ignored it and went in without protest.

  I found myself bustled into a cell by company police.

  I was a prisoner. All my shouts for information, all the shaking of the bars that my fury indulged in, were to no avail. What the future held I could only guess. It seemed forever before the colony manager finally appeared. Then I wished I didn't know.

  "You think you could get away with something like that?" he asked without preliminary. He was a hard-eyed little man with a face like a weasel and deep circles under his eyes, gray lids drooping over them.

  "And just what charges do you think you're holding me on?" I asked in turn, cold with helplessness and fury. "Your Earth managers shall hear of this!"

  "My orders are standing, direct from your Earth managers, mister," he said. "Direct, with details of what to do. They don't name you except as Joe Doe, but they apply. They're…"

  "To let me out of here immediately," I said furiously, but with a hollow in the pit of my stomach.

  "Oh, yes," he said, and his weasel face grimaced. "Oh, yes indeed, almost immediately. We just put you here temporarily. Easier that way." He stopped then, deliberately, and stood watching me. I could feel myself shaking, and I tried to control it. I hoped he couldn't see them.

  But the crooked grin told me he had seen, and translated to his pleasure, and I knew him for a sadist.

  "The doctor'll be here to examine you tomorrow," he said slowly, taking his time to refine my reactions. "You'll go to the psych ward. Obviously insane, you know, probably dangerous, certainly dangerous to your ship and crew."

  Then his voice grew hard and ugly. "After a few doses of shock therapy," he said, with a yearning in his voice under the hardness, "you'll be amenable, quite amenable, amenable enough to ship back to Earth. You'll be cared for the rest of your life, so you needn't worry."

  Then abruptly he grinned, and there was a pleasure in that grin that watered my knees. "I'll be there, watching you," he said.

  I'd read about a sadist's grin, but I'd never seen it before.

  He left then, and the barred door at the end of the corridor outside my cell clanged shut. Then a bolt clicked. It was the most final sound in the universe.

  Time stopped; it just stopped. There's no feeling like it. It could have been hours or days, minutes or years. The light filtering through the high, barred window didn't change, so intellectually I knew that no time had passed. But I knew it internally even more.

  III

  How long it was by a clock before I pulled myself together I still don't know. The light from the window hadn't changed, but eternities had passed.

  Then I began to explore the cell, looking for a way out. I examined every crack in the paint, every scratch on the wall, every corner, every seam where floor met wall or wall met ceiling. Given a reason for doing so, I think I could probably give a microscopic description of that little company cell.

  There was also the jail. I set myself to recall every detail I'd seen. It was a small building, all on ground level, located at the brow of a steep hill. I pulled myself up to the window. The hill fell away below; it was about ten meters to the first shelf, which was covered with boulders.

  The jail was solidly built. It was not of the filmy con-struction typical of the colony. It wasn't built to permit escape.

  It was with a feeling of hopelessness buried as deeply as I could bury it and a stubborn optimism that I set firmly on top of the hopelessness, that I started to work on the only plan I could dream up.

  I scraped up all the grit and dust there was on the floor of the cell, and there was dust and grit, though it seemed too clean to me, as I tried to gather a pile. Then I took my shoelaces, for they were the best grinding surfaces I had, and I worked the heaviest grit onto them. Then I hooked them around the bars of the window and began grinding, back and forth, reaching above my head and working with a ferocity that took little heed of blood-drained, aching arms and numb fingers. I continued rubbing, trying to make that dirt act as a grinding agent.

  I wasn't making much progress, but I was doing the only thing I could think to do; and I couldn't just wait to be made into a vegetable.

  The first shoelace was beginning to fray, and it had been dark outside for some time when there was a quiet laugh above my head, and I heard the lightest of whispers. "Leave it, Captain. Let me give it a try."

  It was only minutes, then, before the bars began to slide out of sight, one at a time, neatly cut. I didn't know how he cut them, and I still don't. I didn't care. The hand that stuck in the window and beckoned, holding the last bar, was the greatest sight I've ever seen. I didn't waste time, and I didn't make a sound, hoisting myself to the window and sliding my head and shoulders out.

  The figure beyond was holding the edge of the window and leaning aside to give me room to join him on a short mooring tube, a plastic, expandable Bourdon mooring tube. It was just big enough for one man to hang onto with a rope harness. The figure was clinging to the tube with a regular climbing belt, but there were no spikes on the shoes. That would have been fatal to the structure itself. Instead, I could see dimly that a loose lacework of rope had been draped over the tube providing foot and hand grips for its climber.

  "Climb on down, Captain," the figure whispered. "I'll be with you in a minute." Then he clung to the window while I made my way down the rope network.

  When I reached the ground and let go, I stumbled, then got to my feet and looked back up. He'd leaned back on his belt and was seaming the bars back in so that the method of my escape would not become immediately apparent.

  I stood at the bottom of the tube looking up, trying to see what the other was doing, when another soft whisper reached me. "This way. Quickly, Captain."

  It's hard to tell, on a barely moonlit slope when someone whispers, where they are or what they are. I looked around, my eyes adjusting, and could make out two figures working on some equipment. Then the tube behind me began hissing down, and the man who'd cut the bars was beside me as it flattened to the ground. He ignored me and began strapping the collapsed tube together, while the other two began detaching what must have been a compressor from the lead-ins.

  But a fourth figure was tugging at my sleeve, and I turned and followed it down a steep way through the boulders to a point where we reached a rock wall behind some buildings. We jumped down from the rock wall, and I could just make out a skimmer there, in an angle behind one building and an alley just beyond.

  "Hadn't I better help with the equipment?" I whispered,

  The figure shook his head. "No. Gallagher's waiting." I realized then for the first time that it was a girl beside me, and then that it was Suzie. "Get those clothes off and put these on," she said. "We may need a captain's uniform some day."

  I took the clothes she shoved into my arms and looked around for a place to undress. She giggled, and then whispered fiercely, "Right here, right now—and fast. We need those clothes; you need these; and there's not much time."

  I did as she said, though my modesty was offended. As I stopped at the skivvies she gestured those off too, and I obeyed. While I was naked as a jay the first of the men landed beside me, reached back and was handed the heavy equipment, then the other two landed and started putting it into the back door of the building. As the packaged mooring tube went past, Suzie shoved my uniform, shoes and skivvies on top and they were taken in, too.

  I had a bit of trouble with the garb she had handed me in the dark, but I got on the old pants and shirt and a kind of sweat shirt affair—not too clean, I judged from the odor—as well as a pair of sandals. I glanced at the legend painted on the door that had closed behind my benefactors, and could just make out in the dim light, surplus sales.

  As I was buckling on the sandals, Suzie leaned forward and passed something damp across my face and hair. It was both damp and slightly sticky. "Have you ever been an actor?" she whispered.

  I had been taken by surprise by the physical contact, and started to reach up to feel my face, but she grabbed my arms and said, "Wait a minute till it dries." Even as she spoke I could feel the damp, sticky stuff cooling and hardening.

  "I… uh… no, I've never tried acting," I stammered.

  "Well, that's okay. It won't take much. Come on." She went to the skinner, opened the door and gestured me in. I saw Seth at the controls as I bent to enter. Then I felt a light tap on the back of my neck.

  I came to, knowing I was in a ship in orbit. My head was throbbing, and I hadn't opened my eyes, but I knew I was in orbit by the feel of things, so different from a planet. I'd spent too many hours with those feelings not to recognize them.

  I opened my eyes, and knew I was in the control cabin of Gallagher's Glacier. There could be no control cabin quite like it, of course. In an ordinary ship, one might have to guess, but Gallagher's control cabin is hand-rigged, and there's an unfinished quality about the consoles and other controls that no manufacturer would tolerate, though the wiring itself was something ships' engineers dream of.

  I was in the navigator's chair, leaned back for acclera-tion or comfortable sleeping; and there was no one at the controls; we were on automatic. I located Gallagher himself when I sat up and looked around, in the tiny galley that opened off the control room, whistling cheerfully under his breath.

  The stiffness I half expected either evaporated or wasn't there as I stood groggily; the throbbing in my head disappeared. My face, though, felt stiff, and when I touched it a fleck of blood came off.

  "Go wash your face," Gallagher told me cheerfully. "You're not dead yet."

  He gestured toward a small refresher next to the galley, and I looked into the mirror there. My face and hair were covered with blood. I looked like I'd just been murdered, or just committed murder. It was synthablood I realized, remembering the damp, sticky stuff. I began dousing water over my face. I needed it for more than the synthablood; I needed to bring myself out of the grogginess. I started out being careful not to splash water on my clothes, then noticed the old sweat-shirt affair I was wearing, and didn't bother.

  I was mopping up with a towel when I looked up to see Gallagher lounging at the bulkhead, grinning. "You've changed some, formerly-dapper Captain," he said happily.

  "I've been in some changing places," I noted, and found myself grinning back, though I couldn't decide why I felt so happy. There were enough problems I could see ahead to keep a man worried, like getting my lander and the men in it back from the planet, and getting the Starfire to Earth so I could report the renegade Stellamira Company. I was out of the trap now that would have prevented it, and I wanted to get on with the job.

  "Who were those people who sprung me out of the clink?" I asked. "Suzie was with them."

  "Suzie and her crew? Well, you could say she was with them. It's her gang. They're what you might call a corporate underground. They do me a bit of a favor now and then, like getting you out of the clink, and I manage to return the favor, now and again."

  "Well," I said carefully, "I owe them somewhat more than a favor. But I plan to report the Stellamira Company to the Earth Space Commission and change the conditions there. Perhaps that will do a bit towards evening the score. Do you know what those company bastards had rigged for me?"

  "I've a pretty good idea." Gallagher was looking at me in a skeptical way, but his voice went hard, with a fury under it. "I've seen some of their results. That's what Suzie and I were sort of planning to change. And I don't think we can wait for you to report to the Space Commission, Harald. Springing you is going to make things pretty hot down there."

  "Oh?" I was concerned. "But how can you and Suzie change it? It will have to be reported, of course. But perhaps, if I can be of assistance in ameliorating conditions meanwhile—I certainly owe them anything I can do. She's an odd one to be mixed up in something like that."

  Gallagher's skeptical look changed to one of amusement. "Suzie? Yep. An odd one, you might rightly say. Never quite met anyone like her for guts or brains or practical ability. She runs that place of hers like a stage manager, and besides what comes to the house itself, she's rumored to have slept personally with half the guys on the planet, corporate and private. I think she does it for fun as well as for purpose, though I think purpose would be sufficient motive, because she knows what she wants to accomplish and that's the best way to do it. The girls she takes in are her kind; they're doing what they're doing because they're bachelor types with a goal in mind. If they're not that type, they don't get into Suzie's. They're the only ones on the planet with freedom to organize what needs organizing and the ability to do it, too. But even if they have the goals she has, a gal can't come in unless she has the bachelor attitude which," he finished dryly, "is somewhat different than what you find in a normal house."

  I looked at him, puzzled, but I changed the subject. "What did she hit me with?" I asked, rubbing the lump at the back of my neck. "And why?"

  Gallagher chuckled. "I reckon she didn't know whether you could handle a bit part as a quick study, so she had to make you into the one kind of actor who can't go up in his lines. She and Seth got you onto the landing field as a drunken crewman that had had one too many. The guards all frequent the place too, and if Suzie says jump, they jump. She knows too many answers about each of them personally for them to question her, even on Stellamira. As for your other question, what she hit you with, why, I imagine she used a little Syrette known as a roller's tap. It's good for using on drunks, whether you want to roll 'em or not, and not particularly harmful if you don't mind a long sleep."

  My face and hair were now clean, but my clothes still stank. I'd been standing there, listening to Gallagher with both ears and not particularly noticing a tugging at my senses until it had been going on, probably, for some time. Now the tugging finally got my attention and I noticed that the feel of the ship was somehow wrong.

  Automatically my mind slipped into what I think of as captain's gear, and I began paying attention to the details of the feel of the ship. The gravity was wrong. Instead of the smooth spin that one should feel in orbit with a slight displacement that spacemen automatically compensate for but never quite get used to, there was a quiver.

  I listened for the throb of motors, and I barely heard it. I listened with each of my other senses in turn, but it was only the little balance point between my ears that said something was wrong with the gravity and the faint quiver.

  "Dublin," I said, "there's something out of kilter with —I think your gravity control, though it might be more serious."

  He nodded slowly. "Thought you might notice, Har-ald." His tone was satisfied. "You're not all by-the-book, I guess. There's a little seat-of-the-pants left in you. Yep, the gravity's a bit out of kilter. We're enlarging the hull, making holds for a cargo of about five thousand people. You better begin getting familiar with the ship anyhow, so come along. I'll show you."

  The mention of five thousand people should have alerted me, but it didn't. I wanted to see the ship, and the reason for looking was immaterial at the time. Gal-lagher headed through the bulkhead at the back of the control room, and I followed.

  We stepped into what should have been a straight, simple corridor, tunnel would be a better word, and I recognized the handiwork of his mice. But it wasn't straight and it wasn't simple; it was bent and twisted like a child's jump rope that had been dropped to lie as it fell, twisted and turned, with bumps, slopes and curves. It was a crazy child's toy of a corridor, and I sucked in my breath, thinking that the bumps might be leaking. Gallagher just stepped out along it like it was the normal way to build a corridor.

  It was even more of a shock when we reached the first of the engine rooms. It contained a king-sized power converter unit, about four meters long and one and a half meters in diameter. The thing was nosed over at the heavier end, and out of level in respect to the servicing catwalk next to it; and there was a thin trickle of water seeping out from in front of the contact surface that was swept up by a pump and circulated, presumably to a better location.

  I stood and stared. Then I found my voice. "Why in hell," I asked slowly, "did you install it that way?"

  "Didn't," said Gallagher. "It creeped."

  I stared at him in amazement, and he began to explain, almost sheepishly. "Ever hang a weight by a string tied around a cake of ice? The string will melt through the ice, but the cake of ice will stay whole. The ice welds itself together behind the string. Well," he went on, chuckling under his sheepish look, "this ship, her parts and specifications creep and move around like she was digesting 'em. I reckon I spend more time reorienting machines and chambers than I did building her in the first place. But she keeps ahead of me and has 'em screwed up most of the time. It's kind of a family battle, you might say."

  I looked at the ice, melting against the converter unit; and I listened to the warmth of his voice as he spoke of "her." She seemed warmer to me. It was as if he had invited me into his home and introduced me to his crazy wife; I was startled at first, but there seemed' a love between them that made her seem warm, comfortable, loving and more beautiful because of it than the dolls you normally meet.

  But I couldn't think of anything to say, so I asked, "Plastic flow?"

  "Yep."

  "But, how do you compensate?"

  "Nope," he answered, "compensate's not the right word; rebuild's more like it. We expand or shrink or change according to circumstances. You get used to change as your only constant after a while," he said tolerantly. He reached out and touched a switch, but nothing in particular seemed to happen as he went on. "In general, anything that has to be moved rapidly I've coupled with the proper type heating surfaces so that it can be done fast, like this one," he said as the converter unit began tilting very slowly and moving back into a level position. The little pump that had been taking water from the melting ice in front of the unit began taking more water as the unit realigned.