When our ship left its carefully planned trajectory and started to wobble through space in dizzy circles, I knew we shouldn’t have passed up that opportunity for an overhauling on Spica IV. My men and I were anxious to get back to Earth, and a hasty check had assured us that the Aaron Burr was in tip-top shape, so we had turned down the offer of an overhaul, which would have meant a month’s delay, and set out straight for home.

As so often happens, what seemed like the most direct route home turned out to be the longest. We had spent far too much time on this survey trip already, and we were rejoicing in the prospect of an immediate return to Earth when the ship started turning cartwheels.

Willendorf, computerman first class, came to me looking sheepish, a few minutes after I’d noticed we were off course.

“What is it, Gus?” I asked.

“The feed network’s oscillating, sir,” he said, tugging at his unruly reddish-brown beard. “It won’t stop, sir.”

“Is Ketteridge working on it?”

“I’ve just called him,” Willendorf said. His stolid face reflected acute embarrassment. Willendorf always took it personally whenever one of the cybers went haywire, as if it were his own fault. “You know what this means, don’t you, sir?”

I grinned. “Take a look at this, Willendorf,” I said, shoving the trajectory graphs toward him. I sketched out with my stylus the confused circles we had been traveling in all morning. “That’s what your feed network’s doing to us,” I said. “And we’ll keep on doing it until we get it fixed.”

“What are you going to do, sir?”

I sensed his impatience with me. Willendorf was a good man, but his psych charts indicated a latent desire for officer-hood. Deep down inside, he was sure he was at least as competent as I was to run this ship and probably a good deal more so.