The band played on

by Lester Del Rey

Murdock shook his head, smiling briefly. "Can't afford it this week," he explained.

A cat could look at royalty; and royalty was free to look at or speak to anyone—even a man who ferried garbage for the station. At the moment, Hennings was king, even in this crowd of self-determined heroes. There was always one man who was the top dog. Hennings' current position seemed as inevitable as Murdock's own had become.

Damn it, someone had to carry the waste down from the station. The men up there couldn't just shove it out into space to have it follow their orbit and pile up around them; shooting it back to burn up in Earth's atmosphere had been suggested, but that took more fuel in the long run than bringing it down by ship. With nearly eight hundred men in the doubly expanded station, there was a lot of garbage, too. The job was as important as carrying the supplies up, and took just as much piloting skill. Only there was no band playing when the garbage ship took off, and there could never be a hero's mantle over the garbage man.

It had simply been his bad luck that he was pilot for the first load back. The heat of landing leaked through the red-hot skin of the cargo section, and the wastes boiled and steamed through the whole ship and plated themselves against the hull when it began to cool, until no amount of washing could clean it completely; after that, the ship was considered good for nothing but the carrying of garbage down and lifting such things as machine parts, where the smell wouldn't matter. He'd gone on detached duty at once, exiled from the pilot shack; it was probably only imagination, but the other men swore they couldn't sleep in the same room with him.

He'd made something of a joke of it at first, while he waited for his transfer at the end of the year. He'd finally consented to a second year when they couldn't get anyone else for the job. And by the end of five years of it, he knew he was stuck; even a transfer wouldn't erase his reputation as the garbage man, or give him the promotions and chances for leadership the others got. Oh, there were advantages in freedom, but if there had been anything outside of the service he could do....

The side door opened suddenly and General Bailey came in. He looked older than his forty years, and the expression on his face sobered the pilots almost at once. He took his time in dropping to the chair behind the table, giving them a chance to come to order. Murdock braced himself, watching as the man took out a cigarette. Then, as it was tapped sharply on the table to pack the end, he nodded. It was going to be a call for volunteers! The picture of the weather outside raced through his mind, twisting at his stomach, but he slid forward on his seat, ready to stand at once.

"At ease, men." Bailey took his time lighting the cigarette, and then plunged into things. "A lot of you have been cursing the station for their forecast. Well, you can forget that—we're damned lucky they could spot Hulda at all. They're in bad shape. Know what acrolein is? You've all had courses in atmospherics. How about it?"

The answer came out in pieces from several of the pilots. Acrolein was one of the thirty-odd poisons that had to be filtered from the air in the station, though it presented no problem in the huge atmosphere of Earth. It could get into the air from the overcooking of an egg or the burning of several proteins. "You can get it from some of the plastics, too," one of the men added.

Bailey nodded. "You can. And that's the way they got it, from an accident in the shops. They got enough to overload their filters, and the replacements aren't enough to handle it. They're all being poisoned up there—just enough to muddle their thinking at first, but getting worse all the time. They can't wait for Hulda to pass. They've got to have new filters at once. And that means—"

"Sir!" Hennings was on his feet, standing like a lance in a saddle boot. "Speaking for my crew, I ask permission to deliver whatever the station needs."