“That’s--interesting news. But I’m afraid I simply haven’t even a few watts.”

“I think you have,” Neil answered. “What about that thing?” He pointed to the Squee’s hutch, which was sitting on the table beside Jacobsen’s elbow. “There must be more than a few watts in the batteries for it.”

Captain Ambarzumian sat silent. The crew watched him almost without breathing. They all knew what he was thinking. Neil’s request might be--very probably was--prompted by malice. He disliked Jacobsen, he hated the Squee. His tight face wore a spiteful little smile. But he might, after all, be on the track of something important.

The chance was too great for Ambarzumian to take. “All right,” the captain said at last. “I’m very sorry, Jacobsen. But you’ll have to give him the batteries.”

In silence Jacobsen fetched a screw driver. He disconnected the big batteries. He put them on the table, still without a word.

Neil picked them up. “Thanks,” he said to nobody in particular. Carrying the batteries, he left the cabin. There was triumphant malice in every line of his rigid little back.

* * * * *

That night, Venner had a nightmare. He dreamed that he was standing out of doors, under a lowering sky, while the wind moaned. The sound of the wind grew louder. It began to rain, big icy drops that came out of the sky with an audible plop.

For all the drops were so cold, they were burningly hot when they touched him. He tried to rub them away, but they clung and scalded in. The noise of the wind was rising. And still the rain fell, in big hot drops. Venner awoke with a start. He rubbed his hands over his face, and found that it was wet and sticky. He could still hear the wind moaning. More frightened than he had been in his dream, he leaped from his bunk and turned on the cabin light.

It was Adams whose breathing had seemed like the wind howling. “What’s the matter?” Venner demanded. “Are you sick?”

“...Hurt,” Adams said with difficulty. “Get Ambarzumian.” At a run, Venner routed the captain from his cubicle. Then, urged by an impulse he couldn’t have defined, he ran to Neil’s laboratory.

* * * * *

There was blood and broken glassware everywhere. Tables had been overset; the laboratory looked as if everything in it had been stirred with a big stick; there wasn’t a flask or test tube unbroken; there was blood high up on the white walls. Neil lay on the floor in bloodsoaked pyjamas. He had been beaten about the head until almost the only recognizable feature of his face was his moustache. In his right hand he was holding one of the long-bladed laboratory knives.

Venner turned and ran back to the forecastle. Ambarzumian was bending over Adams. The emergency lights had been turned on.

“What happened?” Ambarzumian demanded. “How did you get hurt like this?”

“Neil,” the young man answered. “I had to get the batteries back from him.”

“Batteries, Why?”

“For the Squee,” Adams replied. The breath was rattling in his throat, but he smiled at them. “She had to have them; right now, she’s got to have plenty of power.”

“Power? What for?” Ambarzumian questioned. He knew, better than the others, what their position now was; he looked sick and old.

“Because....” Adams, bleeding to death, sounded surprised. “Didn’t you hear what Jacobsen told us? We’ve got to be extra careful with her now. Because she’s going to have a pup.”

* * * * *

Oddly enough, the two deaths improved the morale of the crew. Neil had been deeply and bitterly hated; the loss of the Ganymedean cell material seemed to be more than compensated for by the fact of his death. Adams had been popular enough, but his being dead meant a little more comfort in the way of food, air, and living space for the others. The difficulties of a short-handed landing on earth were still so distant in space and time that it was difficult for the crewmen to appreciate them. Since there was no other way to dispose of the bodies, they were fed into the ship’s atomic reducers, and added, ultimately, a few extra BTU to the auxiliary fuel supply.

* * * * *

As the distance between the ship and earth lessened, Ambarzumian called Jacobsen in for a series of conferences. He wanted to see what could be done toward modifying the landing gear to make a safe landing a little more possible.

“That’s the best I can do, sir,” Jacobsen said at last.

“Yes. You’ve tried hard. It’s ... not too bad.”

* * * * *

Jacobsen touched the zither strings lightly. “What do you think our chances of a safe landing are, sir?” he ventured.

“Oh--about fifty-fifty. Maybe a little better than that. Depends a good deal on what sort of upper stratospheric winds we meet.” Ambarzumian leaned back in his chair and sighed.

“If we do get down to surface safe, it’s going to be hard on the people at home when they learn that we failed. This ship was just about the last hope, and we aren’t bringing anything back.”

“It’s not quite that bad,” Ambarzumian answered. He had grown noticeably more gray-haired in the last month. “We’ve got most of Neil’s notes; they’ll be valuable. We know that he did succeed in making an artificial human zygote. The next ship to leave earth for Ganymede will start off from a higher level than we did.”

“The next ship.... Sir, do you think that what Venner said was true? Did we fail because we haven’t learned to control our own aggressiveness?”

“It certainly looks that way. Adams loved the Squee. When he felt Neil was endangering her, he struck back at him, even though, by his striking back, he destroyed everything the expedition had accomplished. What you said Venner said about men, generally speaking, is certainly one way of looking at it.”

“Yes, but.... Suppose we get home safe. Suppose the other cytologists are smarter than Neil was. Suppose the race goes on living. Will we always be that way? Will we never be able to get rid of?”

“How should I know, Jacobsen? I’m only a human being.”

There was a long silence. At last Jacobsen began to play the zither lightly. “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? Deliver Daniel?” he sang softly but indomitably. “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? And why not every man?”

Transcriber’s Note:

This etext was produced from Future Science Fiction #35, February 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version.

Some song lyric lines have been italicized to match the other song lyrics quoted.

Word change made:

felt to left He left the Captain’s cabin and went back to the forecastle,