Smathers saw O’Brien through the porthole and waved. The navigator waved back. Guranin glanced upwards curiously, hesitated a moment, then waved too. Now O’Brien hesitated. Hell, this was silly. Why not? He waved at Guranin, a long, friendly, rotund wave.

Then he smiled to himself. Chose should only see them now! The tall captain would be grinning like a lunatic out of his aristocratic, coffee-colored face. Poor guy! He was living on emotional crumbs like these.

And that reminded him. He left the control room and looked in at the galley where Semyon Kolevitch, the Assistant Navigator and Chief Cook, was opening cans in preparation for their lunch. “Any idea where the captain is?” he inquired in Russian.

The man glanced at him coolly, finished the can he was working on, tossed the round flat top into the wall disposer-hole, and then replied with a succinct English “No”.

Out in the corridor again, he met Dr. Alvin Schneider on the way to the galley to work out his turn at K.P. “Have you seen Captain Chose, Doc?”

“He’s down in the engine room, waiting to have a conference with Guranin,” the chubby little ship’s doctor told him. Both men spoke in Russian.

O’Brien nodded and kept going. A few minutes later, he pushed open the engineroom door and came upon Captain Sabodh Chose, late of Benares Polytechnic Institute, Benares, India, examining a large wall chart of the ship’s jet system. Despite his youth—like every other man on the ship, Chose was under twenty-five—the fantastic responsibilities he was carrying had ground two black holes into the flesh under the captain’s eyes. They made him look perpetually strained. Which he was, O’Brien reflected, and no two ways about it.

He gave the captain Belov’s message.

“Hm,” Ghose said, frowning. “I hope he has enough sense not to—” He broke off sharply as he realized he had spoken in English. “I’m terribly sorry, O’Brien!” he said in Russian, his eyes looking darker than ever. “I’ve been standing here thinking about Guranin; I must have thought I was talking to him. Excuse me.”