The band played on

by Lester Del Rey

Murdock cut him off. "I'll call it quits if you'll get this cargo out and my usual load in here on the double, along with some fuel. And you might have one of your engineers look over my wings for signs of strain. I've got to ride the next orbit back, two hours from now."

"Go back into that! You're crazy!" Phillips' shock drove everything else from the man's face. "You can't do it! I won't clear you!"

"I thought you were just offering me anything you had," Murdock pointed out.

It took five minutes more of heavy arguing to arrange it, and he might not have succeeded even then if he'd waited until the commander had recovered from his first burst of gratitude, or if the man hadn't been worn down by the poisons in the air and the fatigue of their desperate fight for survival. Phillips was hoarse and sick when he finally gave in and stumbled back to the loaded ferry. He croaked something about idiocy and grateful humanity and took off. Murdock tried, idly, to untangle it in his mind, but at the moment he was again more concerned with hungry pigs.

It was too busy a stretch for him to have time to worry. The square magnesium cans of dehydrated garbage began to come out, along with fuel. Sick men were somehow driving themselves to a final burst of energy as they stowed things carefully to preserve the trim of the ship. From outside, there was a steady tapping and hammering as others went over the skin of the controls with their instruments.

At the end, there was another visit from Phillips, with more arguing. But finally the man gave in again. "All right, damn it. Maybe you can make it. I certainly hope so. But you're not going it alone. You'll take Hennings along as co-pilot. He volunteered."

"Send him over, then," Murdock said wearily. He should have expected something like that. Hennings apparently reacted to the smell of glory like a warhorse to gunpowder.

He took a final look at the cargo, nodding in satisfaction. There was enough waste there to keep the farm going until they were over the hump. If Barr got back and they could enrich it with commercial food on temporary credit, Pete and he would be in clover. He pulled himself about and up to the control cabin, to see the ferry coming out on its last trip.

A minute later, Hennings came through the connecting seal and dogged it closed. "Hi, Tommy," he called out. "Ah, air again. How about letting me run her down for you? You look beat."

"The automatic pilot's disconnected," Murdock told him curtly. It had begun misfunctioning some twenty trips back, and he'd simply cut it out of the circuits, since he seldom used it.