He realized that he had preparations to make quickly, before Browne got suspicious of his delay.

He turned to the board and switched on the intercom. 'People,' he said, 'strap yourselves in again. Help those who were injured to do the same. We may have another emergency. You all have about a minute, I think, but don't waste any of it.'

He cut off that intercom, and activated the closed-circuit intercom of the technical stations. He said: 'Special instructions to technical personnel. Listen carefully. Did any of you hear an explosion about ten minutes ago?'

He had an answer to that within moments after he had finished speaking. A man's twangy voice came: 'This is Dan. There was an explosion in the corridor near me – seems longer ago than ten minutes.'

Lesbee restrained his excitement. 'Where?' he asked.

'D– four-nineteen.'

Lesbee pressed the viewer buttons, and a moment later found himself gazing along a corridor that looked stove in. Wall, ceiling, floor – everything – was a mass of twisted metal.

No question, Dzing had been blown apart. There was no other possible explanation for such destruction.

Relieved, but aware again that his greatest personal danger remained, Lesbee set up Stage Two of the little device in his pocket in relation to the alternate control board. Then he turned and faced Browne.

The older man seemed uncertain as to what had happened.

'What was all that?' he asked.

Lesbee explained that Dzing was destroyed.

'Oh!' Browne seemed to consider that. 'That was clever of you not to reveal it,' he said finally.

'I wasn't sure,' Lesbee said. 'This ship is really soundproofed. The explosion didn't reach us here.'

Browne seemed to accept that.

Lesbee said, 'If you'll wait a moment while I put away this gun, I'll carry out my part of the bargain.'

But when he had put the blaster away, he paused out of pity.

He had been thinking about what Browne had said, earlier: that the trip to earth might require only a few months. The officer had backed away from that statement, but it had been bothering Lesbee ever since.

If it were true, then, indeed, nobody needed to die.

He said quickly, 'What was your reason for saying that the journey home would only take – well – less than a year?'

'It's the tremendous time compression near light-speed,' Browne explained eagerly. 'The distance, as you pointed out, is over twelve light-years. But with this new principle of acceleration, we can work up a time ratio of 300, 400, or 500 to one, and we'll actually make the trip in less than a month. When I first started to say that, I could see that the figures were incomprehensible to you in your tense mood. In fact, I could scarcely believe them myself.'

Lesbee said, staggered, 'We can get back to the solar system in a few weeks – my God!' He broke off, said urgently, 'Look, I accept you as commander. We don't need an election. The status quo is good enough for any short period of time. Do you agree?'

'Of course,' said Browne. 'That's the point I've been trying to make.'

As he spoke, his face was utterly guileless.

Lesbee gazed at that mask of innocence and he thought hopelessly, 'What's wrong? Why isn't he really agreeing? Is it because he doesn't want to lose his command so quickly?'

Sitting there, unhappily fighting for the other's life, he tried to place himself mentally in the position of the commander of a vessel, tried to look at the prospect of a return to Earth from the other's point of view. It was hard to picture. But presently it seemed to him that he understood.

He said gently, feeling his way, 'It would be kind of a shame to return without having made a successful landing anywhere. With this new speed, we could visit a dozen sun systems, and still get home in a year.'

The look that came into Browne's face for a fleeting moment told Lesbee that he had penetrated to the thought in the man's mind.

The next instant Browne was shaking his head vigorously. 'This is no time for side excursions,' he said. 'We'll leave explorations of new star systems to future expeditions. The people of this ship have served their term. We go straight home.'

Browne's face was now completely relaxed. His blue eyes shone with truth and sincerity.

There was nothing further that Lesbee could say. The gulf between Browne and himself could not be bridged.

The commander had to kill his rival so that he might finally return to Earth and report that the mission of the Hope of Man had been accomplished.

18

Lesbee used the tractor beam to push Browne about six feet from him. There he set him down, and released him from the beam. With the same deliberateness, he drew his hand away from the tractor controls, and swung his chair around so that his back was to the board. Thus he rendered himself completely defenseless.

It was the moment of vulnerability.

Browne leaped at him, yelling: 'Miller – pre-empt!'

First Officer Miller obeyed the command of his captain.

As the bridge control board took over, a sequence of control exchanges was set in motion.

The alternate control board was removed from the circuit.

The rerouted electric current opened and closed relays, in accordance with the physics of current flow.

The two control boards were so perfectly synchronized that the one which took over always continued what the other had had set up on it. Normally, therefore, nothing could go wrong during pre-emption.

But in this instance, the alternate control board had one of its controls subordinated to the tiny device in Lesbee's pocket. At the moment, that powerful little gadget was holding in check twelve g's of drive and eight g's of artificial gravity... in reverse, exactly as Lesbee had reprogrammed them when he pressed the Stage Two Button.

When the bridge took over, the drive and the artificial gravity resumed their function instantly.

The Hope of Man – instantly – decelerated at a four-g gap speed.

Lesbee took the blow of that abrupt slowdown, partly against his back and partly against his right side, with the sturdy rear of the chair as his principal support.

It was a wholly adequate support.

But Browne was caught off balance. He had been coming at Lesbee from an angle. The enormous impact of the deceleration flung him at this angle straight at the control board. He struck it with an audible thud and stuck to it as if he were glued there.

A cut– off relay, which Lesbee had also preprogrammed through the alternate control board, now shut off the engines as suddenly as they had started. During the weightlessness that followed, Browne's body worked itself free and slid down to the dais.

There was discoloration at a dozen spots on the uniform. As Lesbee stared, fascinated, blood seeped through.