"But—aren't you preparing to blast off?"
"I generally let my second pilot do it," said the spacer.
"But why? I thought—"
"Why? Because I own the ship, that's why."
"What has that got to do with it?" said Winstead. "I should think you'd want all the more to handle it yourself!"
"Listen—I sweated out years in space, saving the price of this can. If she blows up, d'you think I want to know that I did it? There's the buzzer. Button up!"
He pulled himself into a compartment like Winstead's and clapped the door shut. Winstead, beginning to perspire gently, found the safety straps, secured himself, and awaited the worst.
The Leaky Dipper sped through interstellar space for five silent and introverted days before reaching the little yellow sun named Gelbchen. The highlight of the flight was the day one of the crew dropped his mess tray on the deck, causing one faint, one case of palpitations, and one fist fight, in approximately that order.
The captain spent two days groping his way into an orbit about the second planet. When he announced that the cargo would be pumped into a number of small local tankers that had risen from the surface to meet them, Winstead volunteered to go down in the first one.
"Don't blame you," said the swarthy spacer. "I'd like to go too. Don't worry—they'll be good and careful landing. The stuff's that much more expensive now that it's been freighted out here."