'What's your name, bud?' he enquired, as he skinned the cover off his ration. 'Mine's Hartley-"Satchel" Hartley.'

'Mine is Humphrey Wingate.'

'Okay, Hump. Pleased to meet 'cha. Now what's all this song and dance you been giving me?' He spooned up an impossible bite of baked eggs and sucked coffee from the end of his carton.

'Well,' said Wingate, his face twisted with worry, 'I guess I've been shanghaied.' He tried to emulate Hartley's method of drinking, and got the brown liquid over his face.

'Here-that's no way to do,' Hartley said hastily. 'Put the nipple in your mouth, then don't squeeze any harder than you suck. Like this.' He illustrated. 'Your theory don't seem very sound to me. The company don't need crimps when there's plenty of guys standing in line for a chance to sign up. What happened? Can't you remember?'

Wingate tried. 'The last thing I recall,' he said, 'is arguing with a gyro driver over his fare.'

Hartley nodded. 'They'll gyp you every time. D'you think he put the slug on you?'

'Well ... no, I guess not. I seem to be all right, except for the damndest hangover you can imagine.'

'You'll feel better. You ought to be glad the Evening Star is a high-gravity ship instead of a trajectory job. Then you'd really be sick, and no foolin'.'

'How's that?'

'I mean that she accelerates or decelerates her whole run. Has to, because she carries cabin passengers. If we had been sent by a freighter, it'd be a different story. They gun 'em into the right trajectory, then go weightless for the rest of the trip. Man, how the new chums do suffer!' He chuckled.

Wingate was in no condition to dwell on the hardships of space sickness. 'What T can't figure out,' he said, 'is how I landed here. Do you suppose they could have brought me aboard by mistake, thinking I was somebody else?'

'Can't say. Say, aren't you going to finish your breakfast?'