All the fear, worry and despair that he had felt since Dora's check day transmuted magically into an alloy of anger and hatred against any authority.
He searched for the officers' quarters, his feet stamping loudly against the metal flooring, the noise thrusting new aches into his head, the aches in his head increasing his fury.
Hopelessly lost after a moment, he opened one door and caught a glimpse of inferno and the insulation-clad men who tended the propulsion units. Twice he blundered into the space between the outer and inner hulls on the wrong side of the ship. One panel in the wall that looked like a door proved to be the lid for a viewer that gave a fantastically beautiful image of the stars and planets outside the ship. He had wandered into a storeroom when a voice came from behind him:
"Getting thirsty again?"
"Where's the captain?" Greg yelled back. The man who had called to him straightened from behind a row of boxes.
"Last time I saw you, you were more interested in drinks than in the captain."
Greg looked hard at muscular fingers, and the ghost image of a bar back on Earth materialized for an instant in the stockroom around the man. It was the doctor who had given him instructions on how to find the freighter recruiting office!
"So you're the one who had me shanghaied to Venus!" Greg sprang at the man, fists flying.
The doctor ducked. Greg sprawled clumsily at the opposite wall, thrown off balance by the slighter gravity maintained in the ship. He started to rise, then dropped to his knees as knife-like pain shot through his ankle. The doctor stood over him with that strange half-smile.