The Measure of a Man

Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction , April, 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man is the ability to tell one from the other ... and act on it.
Alfred Pendray pushed himself along the corridor of the battleship Shane , holding the flashlight in one hand and using the other hand and his good leg to guide and propel himself by. The beam of the torch reflected queerly from the pastel green walls of the corridor, giving him the uneasy sensation that he was swimming underwater instead of moving through the blasted hulk of a battleship, a thousand light-years from home.
He came to the turn in the corridor, and tried to move to the right, but his momentum was greater than he had thought, and he had to grab the corner of the wall to keep from going on by. That swung him around, and his sprained ankle slammed agonizingly against the other side of the passageway.
Pendray clenched his teeth and kept going. But as he moved down the side passage, he went more slowly, so that the friction of his palm against the wall could be used as a brake.
He wasn't used to maneuvering without gravity; he'd been taught it in Cadets, of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away. When the pseudograv generators had gone out, he'd retched all over the place, but now his stomach was empty, and the nausea had gone.
He had automatically oriented himself in the corridors so that the doors of the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling above and the deck below. Otherwise, he might have lost his sense of direction completely in the complex maze of the interstellar battleship.
Or , he corrected himself, what's left of a battleship .
And what was left? Just Al Pendray and less than half of the once-mighty Shane .