Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

48 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION technician hurried back to the eleva- tor, dropping it to the boarding ramp. “Call the ambulance,” he yelled at a passing workman. “‘Jim’s fainted again.” He waited until the ambulance arrived, then extracted Jim’s pad of inspection forms from his pocket be- fore they carried him away. The chief inspector appeared shortly afterward, his own master inspection form in his hand. ““Hello, Pete,’ he said. “‘I hear Jim fainted again.” “This makes the third time that’s happened,”’ Pete said, disgust in his voice. “It’s his own fault—his wite’s always nagging him to make more money so he puts in all the overtime he can, and between the overwork, the nagging, the heat and the sort of food they have at lunch at the cafe- teria—and him being a puny little guy, anyway—it’s no wonder his stomach rebels now and then.”’ “My stomach would rebel if I had the shrew he has for a wife,” the in- spector said. “Jim’s a good sort—I like him, but that wife of his! Any- way’’—the inspector mopped his florid and steaming face—“‘it’s hot enough in this drive room to make anybody ass out.” “T still say a man’s a fool to let a woman nag him into indigestion and even acute indigestion and try to work overtime when he’s not able to,”’ Pete, a bachelor, insisted. “Well, maybe you're right,” the married chief inspector admitted, “but he’s the most reliable man I have. He’s slow, but when he marks down a ship’s drive as having been inspected, you can be sure that he missed nothing. Which brings up... . what did he lack in here when he fainted?” ‘Nothing,’ Pete said. “Here’s his inspection form—he has every item checked off. He had already put all his tools back in his box, too, so he must have done.” The chief inspector took the inspec- tion form and ran his eyes down it. “He has everything checked, all right. So, let’s get out of this oven. The old tub is now ready for flight so far as Port Inspection is concerned, and they want to take off the minute we clear them.” ““Where’s it bound for?’ Pete asked, pausing to light a cigarette. “Out on the other side of the Thousand Suns cluster, somewhere. This is some little peanut outfit that call themselves Explorations, Limited.” “Oh?” Pete looked mildly inter- ested. ““The other side of the Thousand Suns has some unmapped systems, I understand. What are they looking for—did they say?” “T wouldn’t know.” The chief in- spector shrugged. “I only talked to them a few minutes. There are five of them—an elderly sort of a fellow, who threw up his job as dean of some little technological college in New Chicago gathered up his three brightest graduate students and now they’re all off into space to see the galaxy and seek their fortunes.” ““You said there were five,’ Pete reminded him. “There are. They bought this old heap—it was a service ship for the old Interplanetary Freightlines, once— and happened to run into a mining engineer just back from Charon. He had made a nice little pile in some iridium strike out there and he bought in with them. This had a rocket drive so the five of them managed to dig up enough money to have a hyper- space drive and that nuclear converter installed. I guess it took every last cent they had, too—those hyperspace connicloooks.c© iin