Astounding British Edition, Volume 8, No. 11 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

BLOOD BANK of the cosmos. As the radiant energy increased, the cabin became warmer, and the pilot set up a partial radiation screen. At last the penetration stopped. Roki punched the intercom again. “What level are we on, Daleth?” “Ninety thousand,” she replied curtly. Roki made a wry mouth. She had pushed it up to the red line without a blink. It was O.K.—if the radiation screens held out, If they failed to hold it, the ship would be blistered into a drifting dust cloud. “Want me to navigate for you?” he called. “I’m capable of handling my own ship,” she barked. “I’m aware of that. But I have nothing else to do. You might as well put me to work.” She paused, then softened a little. “O.K., come forward.” She swung around in her chair as he entered the cabin, and for the first time he noticed that, despite the close-cropped hair and the dungarees and the cigar-smoking, she was quite a handsome girl—handsome, proud, and highly capable. Daleth, the © frontier planet, bred a healthy if somewhat unscrupulous species. “The C-maps are in that case,” she said, jerking her thumb toward a filing cabinet. “Work out a course for maximum radiant thrust.” Roki frowned. “Why: not a least-time course?” She shook her head, ‘My reactors aren’t too efficient. We need all the boost we can get from external energy. Otherwise we'll have to dive back down for fuel.” Worse and worse!—Roki thought as he dragged out the C-maps. Flying this boat to Sol would have been a feat of daring two centuries ago. Now, in an age of finer ships, it was a feat of idiocy. Half an hour later, he handed her a course plan that would allow the Idiot to derive about half of its thrust from the ’ variations in radiation pressure from the > roaring inferno of the high-level cosmos. | She looked it over without change of ex- pression, then glanced at him curiously, after noting the time. “You're pretty quick,” she said. “Thank you.” “You're hardly stupid. Why did you pull such a boner?” Roki stiffened. “I thought you planned to regard that as none of your business.” She shrugged and began punching course- settings into the courser. “Sorry, I forgot.” 37 Still angry, he said, “I don’t regard it as a boner. I’d do it again.” She shrugged again and pretended a lack of interest. “Space-smuggling could be the death of the galaxy,” he went on. “That’s been proven, A billion people once died on Tau II because somebody smuggled in a load of non-Tauian animals—for house pets. I did only what history has proven best.” “I’m trying to mind my own business,” she growled, eyeing him sourly. Roki fell silent and watched her reshape the radiation screen to catch a maximum of force from the flare of energy that blazed behind them. Roki was not sure that he wanted her to mind her own _ business. They would have to bear each other’s pre- sence for several months, and it would be nice to know how things stood. “So you think it was a stupid boner,” he continued at last. “So does everyone else. It hasn’t been vety pleasant.” She snorted scornfully as she worked. “Where I come from, we don’t condemn fools. We don’t need to. They just don’t live very long, not on Daleth.” “And I am a fool, by your code?” “How should I know? If you live to a ripe old age and get what you want, you probably aren’t a fool.” And that, thought Roki, was the Dale- thian golden rule. If the universe lets you live, then you’re doing all right. And there was truth in it, perhaps. Man was born with only one right—the right to a chance at proving his fitness. And that right was the foundation of every culture, even though most civilized worlds tried to define “fitness” in terms of cultural values, Where life was rough, it was rated in terms of survival. “I really don’t mind talking about it,” he said with some embarrassment. “I have nothing to hide.” “That’s nice.” : “Do you have a name—other than your firm name?” “As far as you’re concerned, I’m Daleth — Incorporated.” She gave him a suspicious look that lingered a while and became con- templative. “There’s only one thing I’m curious about—why are you going to Sol?” He smiled wryly. “If I told a Dalethian that, she would indeed think me a fool.” Slowly the girl nodded. “I see. I know of Cophian ethics. If an officer’s blunder results in someone’s death, he either proves that it was not a blunder or he cuts his Eomichbooks.co