E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Mary Meehan,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction, April, 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE MEASURE OF A MAN
By RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by Martinez
What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which isnecessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man isthe ability to tell one from the other ... and act on it.
Alfred Pendray pushed himself along the corridor of the battleshipShane, holding the flashlight in one hand and using the other hand andhis good leg to guide and propel himself by. The beam of the torchreflected queerly from the pastel green walls of the corridor, givinghim the uneasy sensation that he was swimming underwater instead ofmoving through the blasted hulk of a battleship, a thousand light-yearsfrom home.
He came to the turn in the corridor, and tried to move to the right, buthis momentum was greater than he had thought, and he had to grab thecorner of the wall to keep from going on by. That swung him around, andhis sprained ankle slammed agonizingly against the other side of thepassageway.
Pendray clenched his teeth and kept going. But as he moved down the sidepassage, he went more slowly, so that the friction of his palm againstthe wall could be used as a brake.
He wasn't used to maneuvering without gravity; he'd been taught it inCadets, of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away. When thepseudograv generators had gone out, he'd retched all over the place, butnow his stomach was empty, and the nausea had gone.
He had automatically oriented himself in the corridors so that the doorsof the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling"above" and the deck "below." Otherwise, he might have lost his sense ofdirection completely in the complex maze of the interstellarbattleship.
Or, he corrected himself, what's left of a battleship.
And what was left? Just Al Pendray and less than half of theonce-mighty Shane.
The door to the lifeboat hold loomed ahead in the beam of theflashlight, and Pendray braked himself to a stop. He just looked at thedogged port for a few seconds.
Let there be a boat in there, he thought. Just a boat, that's all Iask. And air, he added as an afterthought. Then his hand went out tothe dog handle and turned.
The door cracked easily. There was air on the other side. Pendraybreathed a sigh of relief, braced his good foot against the wall, andpulled the door open.
The little lifeboat was there, nestled tightly in her cradle. For thefirst time since the Shane had been hit, Pendray's face broke into abroad smile. The fear that had been within him faded a little, and thedarkness of the crippled ship seemed to be lessened.
Then the beam of his torch caught the little red tag on the air lock ofthe lifeboat. Repair Work Under Way—Do Not Remove This Tag WithoutProper Authority.
That explained why the lifeboat hadn't been used by the other crewmen.
Pendray's mind was numb as he opened the air lock of the small craft. Hedidn't even attemp