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Updated: October 15, 2025
The TV cameras that should be scanning the great lighted circle of the Ipplinger starship had swung to the entrance, waiting for the Hatchet Man. And here he came, down the aisle like a bolt of Chinese lightning. He vaulted the ropes, leaped to the tub, overturned it and was gone back up the aisle before the Blond Terror could retaliate.
Bart ran down a ramp and surged out on the field with the crowd. His eyes, alert for his father's tall figure, noted with surprise that the ship's stairs were guarded by four cloaked Lhari, each with a Mentorian interpreter. They were stopping each person who got off the starship, asking for identity papers.
"What happened to him?" "He pulled a fast one. Starship was in town and looking for a new galley-boy. Dave did some glib talking and got aboard. It was a fluke thing, but he made it." "Which ship?" Alan asked. "Startreader. Bound out on a hop to Beta Crucis XVIII. 465 light-years." Hawkes smiled faintly. "He left a year, year and a half ago.
The Valhalla was on the return leg of a journey to Alpha Centauri. But one man aboard the starship had not waited for the morning alarm. For Alan Donnell the day had begun several hours before.
But his turn came eventually. "Solid ground again, Rat!" They stood on the jet-fused dirt field where the Valhalla had landed. The great golden-hulled starship was reared up on its tail, with its huge landing buttresses flaring out at each side to keep it propped up. "Solid for you, maybe," Rat said. "But the trip's just as wobbly as ever for me, riding up here on your shoulder."
Why, there was one boy who was robbed and beaten in the Frisco Enclave and didn't wake up for a week. Naturally he missed his ship, and no other starship would sign him on. He's on Free Status now, of course. Well, let's see about Donnell Steve Male, shall we?
And thereupon the television audience of several continents saw the faded-in image of mankind's first starship, poised upon its landing-fins among trees more splendid than even television shows had ever pictured before.
He replied, "I only hope we can pull the crew through another pickup. Home and family! Do they think I want mine any less?" Boswellister marched confidently down the road. He would succeed, for didn't he have the well oiled machinery of the whole Ipplinger starship crew of cultural contact specialists to back him up?
Space is immense, and only with a carefully registered route could a ship be found. Starship routes were restricted information. But Alan had influence; he was easily able to persuade the Routing Registration people that his intentions were honorable, that he planned to overtake the Valhalla if they would only let him have the coordinates.
"Free samples!" she screamed, and those who had lagged behind fell into a run with the crowd following Boswellister. The northwest corner of Laurel Canyon and Moorpark had been cleared of houses for the erection of a new billion-dollar shopping center, and the ground was smooth and bare. Here, in the center of the five-acre construction site, the Ipplinger starship settled to Earth.
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