whatever it took to satisfy the brain, it didn't find it in the next few days.

starbuck reported to the bridge each day to press the brain's phase button and answer some of its questions.

then for two days captain birdsel wasn't on hand for the little ceremony and the expression of dissatisfaction with the available site for exploration.

once starbuck went so far as to suggest a reconsideration of a system that had made the one he had seen on the first day look tame. the calculator had duly noted the reconsideration, and had again refused. starbuck didn't dare try an out-and-out override, even though he had been theoretically given complete command of the phasing operation.

the following noon, the middle of the twenty-four period, romero, an engineer, almost tearfully pressed starbuck's crap game losings back on him, apologizing for keeping the money. starbuck was about to refuse, not wanting to reverse the state of indebtedness, when the intercom requested his appearance at the captain's quarters. unable to prolong the argument with romero, he took the money and shoved it in his pocket, heading for the chief cabin.

starbuck rapped on the door, heard the "come" and entered.

captain birdsel was hanging naked, upside down, by his knees from a trapeze, in the middle of a deserted compartment painted solid red.

"you sent for me, sir?" starbuck said.

"yes, ben. yes, i did," captain birdsel replied, swinging gently to and fro. "do you smoke, ben?"

"aye aye, sir."

"the 'aye aye' is reserved for acknowledging orders, not answering questions, ben."

"yes, sir. i'll remember in the future."

"every man on board smokes, ben. everyone but me. i do not use tobacco."

"commendable, sir."

"i suppose you drink, all of the rest of the men do."

"occasionally, captain."

"i abstain."

"enviable, sir."

"have you read any good books lately?"

"good and bad, sir."

"i notice most of the men read. i haven't time for reading myself. or shooting craps. you do play that game like the rest?"

"just once, sir. i lost all my money." which had been returned to him.

"ben, i think you don't fully appreciate the nature of the mission of the space service," captain birdsel said, flexing one knee and performing a difficult one-legged swing on the bar. "it is our duty to go ever onward into the mystery of the unknown. ever deeper, ever traveling into the heart of the secrets of the universe. nothing can stop us. nothing!"

"i'll try to remember, sir. was that all?"

"one more thing," said the inverted captain. "i think you are to be relieved of the duty of officiating at the phasing."

"correct," said another voice, one starbuck had never before heard.

"that's all now, ben."

"very good, sir."

starbuck paused at the door. "that's a fine trapeze you have there, sir."

"thank you, ben."

"i don't want to jump to conclusions," ben said to the knot of men gathered around him listening to his story of the interview with the captain, "but i think captain birdsel is—is—"

"psychotic?" suggested romero.

"schizoid?" percy kettleman ventured.

"'nuts' is the word i was searching for," starbuck concluded. "i believe he intends to keep phasing and phasing, taking us deeper into space and never returning to earth or the inhabited universe."

"i guess," kettleman opined, "that we will just have to convince him that he is wrong in that attitude."

"we can make a formal written complaint and request for an explanation under section xxiv," romero said. "is that what you had in mind, ben?"

"i had a straitjacket in mind," starbuck admitted. "but i'm new in the space service. i have a selfish motive. i want to get back to earth sometime and a vine-covered ethnology class."

"we better go take him," kettleman said heavily.

"as much as i dislike agreeing with an ox like you, kettleman," romero said, "i conclude it is best."

there was a general rumble of agreement.

"wait, wait," a youngish man whose name starbuck vaguely remembered to be horne stepped forward, his eyes glittering with contact lenses. "i ask you men to remember christopher columbus. i like our captain no more than any of you, but he may be right. perhaps what he is doing is vital. we shouldn't let our selfish fears...."

always, starbuck thought, always some egghead comes along to gum up the works.

starbuck knew he would need a decisive argument to overcome horne's objective theory.

starbuck slugged him.

horne crumpled after a flashy right cross starbuck had developed in his extreme youth, and starbuck took a giant step over him, heading for the bridge.

the other crew members followed him.

besides, starbuck thought, he had always considered arguing by analogy to be sloppy thinking.

"don't come in here!" captain birdsel yelled through the partly closed hatch to the bridge. "you'll regret it if you do."

starbuck swallowed hard, and reached for the door handle.

percy kettleman vised his wrist. "i'll go first, little chum."

there wasn't much room for argument with kettleman when it came to a matter of who could indian wrestle the best. he stepped back and let kettleman cross the threshold first.

percy threw open the door, screamed once and fainted.

the rest of the men tended to pull back following this demonstration.

starbuck didn't like to do it, but he didn't like the idea of hanging for mutiny as birdsel had threatened lieutenant frawley on the first day. (starbuck realized he hadn't seen frawley for several days. had birdsel disposed of him as he had threatened?)

he got close enough to the door to see inside. it didn't make him faint, but he did feel a little sick.

"what is it?" romero demanded urgently.

"alien," starbuck said, "an unpleasant looking one inside."

"you sometimes pick up 'ghosts' passing a system," one of the men explained.

"i'm not an alien," birdsel's voice called out. "i'm me. the brain reversed my dimensional polarity. i told you you wouldn't like it."

starbuck stirred up nerve for a second look.

captain birdsel was now a man of many parts. some of them were only areas of abstract line and hues, but there he could see a redly beating heart, a white dash of thigh-bone, and a compassionate blue eye bracketed by two tattooed dragon's talons. the effect was distracting.

starbuck stepped over his second man that day. "captain, we're taking over the ship. we're either going to explore one of these planets we've been passing up or return to earth."

the apparition groaned. "don't you think i know i've gone too far? i'd like to go back, but the brain won't let me. it's taken over just the way i knew it would!"

"nonsense," starbuck snapped with more authority than he felt. "the brain can't violate the principles it was built to operate upon. brain, program this ship for earth."

starbuck expected the sound of that strange voice he had heard in the captain's cabin; but here it had a communications screen and it evidently thought that was sufficient.

i won't go back to that awful old place. i can't, cnt, cnt. so thair.

"take it easy," starbuck said to the machine. "don't get hysterical."

"i don't care about the rest of those swine," birdsel said, "but i hate to have gotten you in a fix like this, ben. i knew the brain was going to replace me sooner or later, but i was going to hold onto my job as long as i could. i was going to stay next to the brain, even if i had to take the position away from you, ben. but the brain kept demanding more and more. finally he did this to me. i knew i had let him go too far."

go away, the brain signaled. go away from me. this monotony is driving me mad, mad.

"i liked you, ben," the captain's voice said from the heart of the thing. "you're not like the scum i've got used to under my command. i'm sorry that you're marooned out of time and space like this. it's kind of tough, i know. but keep your chin up."

"of course, of course," starbuck groaned. "what kind of an ethnologist am i?" he turned to romero. "could you reverse the wiring in the computer?"

"maybe," romero said. "but i could re-program it for a negative result easier. same results, lacking a short circuit."

"okay. do it."

"well, if you say so, ben."

no. stay away from me.

the brain's communication screen flashed a blinding white scream as romero laid hands on it.

"lieutenant frawley's in charge now," starbuck explained to percy kettleman, who was sitting on his bunk with his head between his legs. "birdsel seemed all right after the brain finished changing him back. but we all thought we better keep him under observation for a while."

kettleman straightened up. "sorry i passed out on you. but seeing the old man in that shape was quite a shock."

starbuck nodded agreement. "i don't like to think about the next step the calculator would have taken him through. not just a physical change, but a mental one too. that was the brain's whole reason for existence—to find the unknown. it was programmed to be even more basic than sex or self-preservation are to us. the trouble was, the more it learned, the more readily it could see some similarity to the familiar in the most outer things."

"that was why the captain was acting so nutty? he was trying to appeal to it."

"yes, he had some old moralistic and superstitious ideas about calculators. he thought his job depended on his pleasing it—when of course its job was to please him. but he gave it an idea. if it couldn't find the strange and the different, it would create it. it started with the first changing element in its environment—the captain—but i don't know where it would have stopped if romero hadn't reversed its pleasure-pain synapse response. now it loves the tried and true. it's not much good for space exploration, of course. but a museum may be interested in it now."

"so we'll have to go back to picking our phase points at random, trusting to chance. or the judgment of some skunk like birdsel."

starbuck cleared his throat. "that's another thing. the men aboard the gorgon and the cybernetics machine had something in common. i finally figured that out. most men are afraid of the unknown—they fear and hate it. but obviously not space explorers. they spend their whole lives searching for the unknown. they don't suffer from xenophobia—they are xenophyles. they like anything that's new and different. even a new member of the crew. it kind of lessens the cameraderie aboard a spaceship, but the service must have found the trait valuable. they have searched it out in men and developed it. they even breed it in second-generation spacemen."

"do you know what, starbuck?"

"what, kettleman?"

"all that talk of yours is beginning to get on my nerves." kettleman's triceps flexed.

starbuck sighed. the honeymoon was over for him, and the trip was just beginning.