Keith Ellason smiled, but just barely. "You should have called me for the first trip."
Phipps nodded. "I wish we had had you on the Weblor I."
"Crewmen," Rexroad said, "make poor reporters."
The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. Ellason remembered it well. The decision of Interstellar was that the colonists started a revolution far out in space, that it was fanned by the ignorance of Captain Sessions in dealing with such matters.
"Space affects men in a peculiar way," Phipps said. "We have conquered the problem of small groups in space—witness the discovery of Antheon, for example—but when there are large groups, control is more difficult."
"Sessions," Rexroad said, "was a bully. The trouble started at about the halfway point. It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare with each other and the crew. Sessions was lucky to escape with his life."
"As I recall," Ellason said, "there was something about stunners."
Phipps rubbed his chin. "No weapons were allowed on the ship, but you must remember the colonists were selected for their intelligence and resourcefulness. They utilized these attributes to set up weapon shops to arm themselves."
"The second trip is history," Rexroad said. "And a puzzle."