"Who's there?" Kathy called.

"It's me."

There was silence for a moment, then, "Just a moment - me."

By the time she opened the door, he was glancing fearfully up and down the corridor. He slipped in.

"Why, Johnny."

"Darling!" He reached for her but she avoided him as adroitly as possible in the tiny quarters.

"Why, Johnny Norsen. You know you're not allowed in here. What would Commander Gurloff say? Besides, I thought you were the one who was so sorry to see me on board."

He was hurried, but emphatic. "Look, darling, Kathy. I didn't know then.

Her eyes were mocking.

He held out a hand. "This ring. It was my mother's . . . I . . . I want you to wear it." His angular face was very intent and very sincere.

Her eyes widened now. "Why, Johnny -"

"Listen, sweetheart. I know, these aren't the circumstances. That nothing could . . . well, develop here in the ship. But when we return, when we're back on Terra again, I'm going to give up the space service and we can -"

She interrupted him with a finger on his lips. Her eyes were on the floor now so that he 'Couldn't see the glint of amusement, but she said softly, "I'll keep the ring, Johnny. We can talk about it when . . . 'when we're back again. No, you'd better go." She avoided his arms . "Everybody would be angry they knew you'd been in here."

After he'd gone, she put the ring in a small drawer - with a dozen others.

THE SICK CALL was almost daily growing in magnitude and Doc Thorndon didn't like it. Not a bit. The cruise still had half way to go. He was amazed that they'd hung on this far, actually, but six months was still too long a period to stretch before them.

He applied various tests to the last of his callers and then flicked a stylus against his teeth in irritation as he considered the findings.

Rosen said, worriedly, "What is it Doc? Not . . . not cafard, is it, Doc?"

Thorndon looked down at him and laughed gently. "Ever had even a touch of cafard, Rosen?

"Well, no sir. But I saw a man with it once." Rosen's eyes went nervously about the ship's hospital. The room was about the size of a bedroom of a Pullman of the 20th Century. It had two bunks, one above the other, a tiny folding table, a medicine chest built into the titanium alloy wall, a lavatory.

Doc Thorndon chuckled. "Don't worry. You'll know it when you get space cafard."

Rosen shuddered. "Yes, sir, I know. The fear of black space. The terror of free fall. Complete, berserk hysteria." The little crewman's eyes went empty.

Doc patted him on the shoulder. "Forget about it, Rosen. Haven't you heard? There hasn't been a case of cafard on this ship since I've been ship's doctor." His face tightened subtly. "By the way, what's this I hear about some of you crew members tapping the tract-torpedoes for alcohol and brewing up some jungle juice?"

The crewman was surprised. He hadn't heard about it. But he came to his feet and began shrugging back into his coveralls. He said, warily, "Where'd you hear this, Doc?"

Thorndon laughed cheerfully. "Never mind, and don't worry about it, Rosen. In fact, it wouldn't hurt you to try a little of it. Get your mind off your worries."

Rosen looked at him, shocked. Nothing was more taboo in space than drinking.

"Get on with you," Doc laughed and shooed him from the room.

After the other was gone, the doctor sank down to the side of the bunk and emptied his lungs in a sigh which touched on despair. Six more months to go.

Kathy put her head in the door and said, "Doctor Thorndon?"

He looked up. "Come on in, Kathy. I'm through for the day and I have some suggestions for you.

She entered and closed the door behind her. She leaned back against it and looked at him thoughtfully, and once again he reminded himself that she wasn't attractive-really. It was her aggressive personality, that and her obvious femininity. You seldom saw mammary glands like . . . He pulled his mind away from that trend of thought. Doc was masculine too, and not that old.

"Well, Kathy?" he said wearily.

She said, "I think I've finally figured out just what you're doing."

"You have? Well, I'm not surprised. You're not a very stupid person, Kathy." He didn't look as he talked. "How many of m. have proposed to you this week?"

"Four. Lieutenant Roland, and three more of the crew members."

He snorted, amusedly. "I'll wager you'll have hooked two thirds of them before the cruise is over." The amusement left him. "If it's ever over."

"If it's ever over."

She said, very softly, "It's even more than usually important that the ship get back, isn't it?"

He looked up at her, without speaking.

She said, "I've been picking up odds and ends, here and there. I don't know too much about politics, but from what the crew says, and the officers too, for that matter, Commander Mike Gurloff is pretty big potatoes in reform politics back on Terra."

Doc rubbed the end of his nose with a thoughtful forefinger and wondered just how much to tell her.

She said, "It's pretty important that he get back, isn't it?"

Doc Thorndon said slowly, "More than just get back, Kathy. He's got to return with his reputation as strong as ever. He's got to be able to throw into their faces just what tricks the present administration has been pulling on him."

She sank into the one chair the room boasted. "Are we going to make it?"

Doc pursed his lips. Finally he said, "The odds are against it, Kathy."

They sat silently for awhile.

Doc took a deep breath. "By the way, Kathy, I just had Rosen in here, you know, the signalman. He's in the first stages of cafard. He doesn't know it yet, but he is."

Air hissed through her teeth.

He nodded, seriously. "We've got to snap him out of it, but quick. One bad case, and it'd spread through this ship like wildfire. Now this is what you'll have to do . . ."

She listened very carefully and nodded. The two of them looked like a pair of conspirators, leaning toward each other, their faces very serious.

COMMANDER GURLOFF looked up C and down the corridor, spotted no one and slipped into the ship's hospital. He closed the door and turned to Doc Thorndon who was lying on the bottom bunk reading.

Doc looked up from his book and said, "Hello, Mike. Have a ....seat."

Mike Gurloff scowled at him, but lowered himself into the indicated chair.

He said, , Doc, what the kert are you trying to do with my ship and crew? The whole command is falling apart."

Doc Thorndon put a finger in his place. "Oh?" he said.

"Yeah, oh. Don't act so innocent." Gurloff hesitated, then went into the matter that bothered him in some detail. "Doc," he said, "You've always had a lot of leeway on the New Taos. Of course, it's not just the New Taos, any ship's doctor on any space craft on a long cruise has lots of leeway - as much as he needs to fight off the threat of space cafard. Maybe you've had a bit more than most, but maybe that's because you've accomplished more than most."

The doctor reminded him softly, "We haven't had a serious case of cafard since I've been aboard, Mike."

In an earlier age, Commander Gurloff would have knocked on wood. Now he shuddered. "All right," he said, "I'll take that. But this time, Doc, I'm afraid you're going too far. What's this about stun gun fights between crew members down in the torpedo room? What's this about gambling going on, more or less openly, and the crew being on the verge of mutiny because of Kathy? What's this about Mart Bakr and Dick Roland starting a fist fight in the wardroom the other day? And Rosen going on duty soused to the eyeballs?" His voice became more incisive. "Discipline aboard this ship is falling apart, Doc. And, to my surprise, I seem to find your fine meddlesome finger in every case I note that's adding to this collapse."

The doctor nodded, "That's right," he said agreeably.

That's right?" Gurloff blurted. ,"What do you mean? I come in here expecting you to have some explanation of your actions and you merely say it's true, that thing I've accused you of is true."

"It is," the Doctor said mildly.

"That you're inciting the crew to mutiny, that you're encouraging fighting and drink, that --"

"Yes," the Doctor said.

Gurloff blinked at him. Stared a moment. Then came to his et. He stood, looking down at the other, the back of his hands on his hips. He was incredulous.

He snapped, "Doctor, you realize a crew without discipline incapable of running a ship?"

"Let us say that it's incapable of running a ship indefinitely."

"And you say that you're deliberately encouraging a collapse of half the rules in the service?"

Doc sat up, putting his feet on the deck. He said, very seriously, "Mike, how long have we been out thus far?"

The other scowled. "Somewhat over six months."

"How many cases of space cafard, so far?"

The answer was a growled "None."

"Without books, without games, without any entertainment, for all practical purposes, we're through half of this cruise without ,one case of mental collapse, and that in spite of the fact that the crew had less than two weeks rest after the last trip."

Mike Gurloff leaned back against the bulkhead and scowled at him. "You mean you're preventing cafard by -"

Doc Thorndon leveled a finger at his skipper. "I'm preventing the complete collapse of this crew by every method I can devise. I can tell you right now, if we ever get back to Terra, this crew as a unit, will probably never be fit to take a ship out again. It was you, Mike, who said we had to make the cruise; you said that if you could make it you'd be in a position to upset the corrupt bunch of bureaucrats that are running the space service now.

"All right, Mike Gurloff, I believe in you. I'm trying to get this ship back before it turns into an asylum of howling, raving maniacs. It's taking every dirty deal, every little trick, every bit of double dealing I can think of to keep monotony and boredom, the breeding ground of cafard, from setting in."

"Including using that girl, Kathy, to keep the men in a continual dither?"

"Definitely! She's my best weapon."

Mike Gurloff thrust his hands into his tunic pockets and stared, unseeingly, at the medicine chest. He muttered, "There's one other thing, Doc, that I hadn't thought of before."

"Yes?"

"It's true that the New Taos has become the most popular craft in the fleet. Why?"

Doc Thorndon said indignantly, "For good reason! In the past two or three years it's made at least four cruises with outstanding success against the Kradens. Every time the New Taos returns from a cruise, it has a victory to report. Why -"

"Every time but this time, Doc," Gurloff said wearily. "And how long does a hero remain in the public eye when he slacks off on his heroism?"

Thorndon frowned.

Gurloff said, "Doc, this time they've sent us off on a year's cruise into empty space. There's nothing in this direction. No enemy, no galaxy that we'll reach. No nothing. When we return after a full year of being out of the news - we'll have nothing to report." He thought it over for a minute. "I wouldn't be surprised if the powers that be so time it that just about when the New Taos berths, some other ship, with a skipper and crew more amenable to the present administration, hits the headlines with some outstanding deed. just you, watch."

He turned on his heel, mumbled a farewell, and left. Mike Gurloff was beginning to show both his, age and the accumulated bitterness of years of having his career thwarted.

Doc Thorndon gazed after him, and rubbed the end of his nose with a thoughtful forefinger. "I hadn't thought of that angle," he said out loud.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE CONCLUSION OF "STOWAWAY!"