All complete rubbish. I knew that even as I fantasized, and McAndrew pointed out why when we discussed it later.

“We got the way we are, Jeanie, because life on Earth is one long fight for limited resources. Our bloody-mindedness all started out as food battles, three billion years ago. The Halo isn’t like that — everything will be part of the food supply. How much evolving would we have done if it rained soup every day and the mountains of Earth had been made of cheese? We’d still be single-celled organisms, happy as clams.”

It sounded plausible. McAndrew was so bright that you tended not to question him after a while. But an hour or two later I was worrying again. It occurred to me that Mac was a physicist — when it came to biology he was way outside his field. And something had happened to Lanhoff and his ship. What could it have been?

I didn’t mention it again, but I worried and fretted, while McAndrew and Anna Griss talked and laughed in the sleeping area and Will Bayes sat next to me in the control area, miserable with his own thoughts. He was so dominated by Anna that I often lost sight of him as an independent person when she was around. Now I found out what made him tick — security.

Poor Will. Looking for security he had joined the safest, most stable organization in Earth’s government: the Food Department. That was the place for a solid, Earthbound, risk-free job. He had no desire for adventure, no wish to travel more than a mile from his little apartment. He had been in space only once before, as part of a meeting between the Council and the United Space Federation. Now he was embarked on a mission so far from home that he might survive even if the Sun went nova.

How had it happened? He didn’t know. It didn’t occur to him to blame Anna. He sat about, uncertain and unhappy. I kept him company, my own worry bump throbbing randomly until at last it was time to throttle the drive and begin final search and rendezvous. Manna should be less than ten million kilometers ahead of us.

“QUERY DISTANCE FOR STAR HARVESTER APPROACH? DEFAULT VALUE: ZERO.”

Our computer began talking to us while we were still scanning ahead for first visual contact. No matter what had happened to the vessel’s crew, Star Harvester’s guidance and control system was still working. Automatic communication for identification and position-matching had begun between the two ships as soon as drive interference was low enough to permit signal transfer.

“Fifty thousand kilometers.” I didn’t want an immediate rendezvous. “Manual control.”

“FIFTY THOUSAND KILOMETERS. CONTROL TRANSFERRED.”

“We’ll see nothing from that distance.” Anna was impatiently watching the hi-mag viewing screen. “We’re wasting time. Take us in closer.”

We could now see the rough-cut oblong of Manna on the imaging radar. A bright cluster of point reflections at one end had to be the Star Harvester’s assembly of sections. I suddenly had a new feel for the size of the body we were approaching. Lanhoff’s ship was of the largest class in the USF fleet. Next to Manna it looked like specks of dust.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Anna spoke more loudly. “I don’t want a view from a million miles away — take us in closer. That’s an order.”

I turned to face her. “I think we should be cautious until we know what’s going on. We can do a lot of overall checking from this distance. It’s safer.”

“And it wastes time.” Her voice was impatient. “I’m the senior officer on this ship. Now, do as I say, and let’s get in closer.”

“Sorry.” I couldn’t delay this moment any longer. “You’re the senior officer while we’re in free flight, I agree. But when we’re in a rendezvous mode with another ship, the pilot automatically has senior decision authority. Check the manuals. I have final say on our movements until we’re on the way back to Earth.”

There was a long pause while we sat eyeball to eyeball. Anna’s face took on a touch of higher color on the cheeks. McAndrew and Will Bayes held an uncomfortable silence.

“You’ve had this in mind all along, haven’t you?” Anna said softly. Her voice was as cold as Charon. “Damn you, you counted on this. You’re going to waste everybody’s time while you play at being the boss.”

She went through to the other communications department, and I heard the rapid tapping of keys. I didn’t know if she was making an entry into the log, or merely calling out the section of the Manual that defines the transfer of authority to the pilot during approach and rendezvous. I didn’t care. Super-caution has always paid off for me in the past. Why change a winning hand, even for Anna Griss? I concentrated my attention on the incoming data streams.

Half an hour later Anna came back and sat down without speaking. I was uncomfortably aware of her critical attention over my shoulder. I gestured to the central display screen, where the second series of remotely sensed observations from Manna were now appearing. The computer automatically checked everything for anomalies. One new set was displayed in flashing red for our attention.

“That’s why I didn’t want to rush. I don’t think we’ve been wasting time at all. Mac, look at those radioactivity readings. What do you think of them?”

The computer had done its preliminary analysis, taking the ratio of radioactivity measurements from Manna to typical Halo bodies and to the general local background. McAndrew frowned at the smoothed values for a few seconds, then nodded.

“Uh-uh. They’re high. About six hundred times as big as I would expect.”

I took a deep breath. “So I think we know what happened to Lanhoff. One of the fusion units must have run wild when they were installing it. See now why I’m cautious, folks?”

Anna Griss looked stunned. “Then the crew all got a fatal overdose of radiation?”

“Looks like it.” I had proved my point, but not in a way that gave me any satisfaction. I felt sick inside. When a fusion plant blows, there’s no hope for the crew.

“No, Jeanie.” McAndrew was frowning and rubbing at his sandy hairline. “You’re jumping to conclusions. I said the radioactivity was six hundred times as big as it should be, and it is. But it’s still low — you could live in it for years, and it wouldn’t do you much harm. If a fusion plant had gone, the reading from Manna would be a hundred thousand times what we’re measuring.”

“But what else could give us abnormally high values?”

“I’ve no idea.” He looked at me apologetically. “And we’ll never know from this distance. Seems to me that Anna’s right. We may have to get in a lot closer for a good look if we really want to find out.”

Perhaps the idea that Lanhoff and his crew were almost certainly dead was hitting Anna hard for the first time. At any rate, there was no triumph in her expression as she watched me ease us gingerly forward until we were only ten thousand kilometers from the planetoid. We went slowly, all our sensor input channels wide open. I set the control system to hold us at a constant distance from the surface of Manna.

“That’s as far as I’m willing to take us,” I said. “We’re a long way from home, and I won’t risk our only way of getting back. Any closer look will have to be done with the transfer pod. Mac, I’ve not had time to watch the inputs. Is there anything about the ship or about Manna that’s looking out of line?”

He had been muttering to himself over by a display screen. Now he frowned and pressed a sequence of control keys.

“Maybe. While you were busy I did a complete data transfer from Star Harvester’s computer to ours. Lanhoff and his crew stopped feeding in new inputs a hundred and fifteen days ago — that’s when the signals to Oberon Station cut off — but the automatic sensors kept right on recording. See, here’s the very first radioactivity reading from Manna when they arrived, and there’s one taken just a few minutes ago. Look at ’em. Identical. And now look at this. This is the thermal profile of a cross-section through Manna’s center.”