Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

prostrate, in fearful pain, they smiled. The dead Viking had come back from a nameless grave; now, at last, she lived again. Captain Kleberg, his iron-gray hair neatly combed, leaned back in his chair and with an expression almost of contentment on his face puffed on a pipe which had seen better days. Mark Langston, Jim McConnell, and Stan Owens challenged their chairs in their usual ways and perhaps drank more of Captain Kleberg’s Scotch than the rule book Strictly allowed. Mark Langston’s leg was throbbing unpleasantly but he ignored it. The murmur of the vibrations, the distant hum of buzzers, the clicking of instruments, the far-off song of the jets—all these were once more blended together into the music he had known. What he had done, and what he had seen, on the dark Viking had washed his bitterness away as though it had never existed. He could look his fellow man in the eye again, with pride. That was one of those things you never discussed with anyone, that stayed bottled up within you always. But that was also one of the things that counted in the long run. “They never would have had a prayer alone,” Stan Owens said. “Not a prayer.” “Hardly,” agreed McConnell. “It was almost more than we could manage, even with the power unit from the launch, to clear that drive and rig the rods so they could handle them. They wouldn't have had as good a chance as aman trying to build a spaceship with a screw driver.” “From one point of view they were. ridiculously overconfident in even trying to get that ship going again,” Owens said thoughtfully, sipping his drink. “That was one reason the captain had to go—he knew too much to try. As long as he lived, the situation was static; if he had remained in command we couldn't have done a thing.” CORniclooo SS (SO)