Parkinson must be dead; he knew that. That meant the Chamber. And even if he wasn’t, they’d send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was no way for either planet to communicate with the ship; it was hard enough to keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such a comparatively small thing as a ship.
But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up the instant the ship landed. And the best he could hope for was a return to Mars.
No, by God! He wouldn’t go back to that frozen mud-ball! He’d stay on Earth, where it was warm and comfortable and a man could live where he was meant to live. Where there was plenty of air to breathe and plenty of water to drink. Where the beer tasted like beer and not like slop. Earth. Good green hills, the like of which exists nowhere else.
Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited and checked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It couldn’t go wrong. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to go back to Mars.
Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn’t appreciate his position. He hadn’t done anything to them, but they just didn’t like him. He didn’t know why; he’d tried to get along with them. Well, if they didn’t like him, the hell with them.
If things worked out the way he figured, they’d be damned sorry.
He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, he pretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic’s locker.
And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife.
Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship’s two lifeboats. He was saving the other for himself.
The ship was eight hours out from Earth and still decelerating when Clayton pulled his getaway.