Redemption Cairn - Large Print Edition

Have you ever been flat broke, hungry as the very devil, and yet so down and out that you didn't even care? Looking back now, after a couple of months, it's hard to put it into words, but I think the low point was the evening old Captain Harris Henshaw dropped into my room-my room, that is, until the twenty-four-hour notice to move or pay up expired. There I sat, Jack Sands, ex-rocket pilot. Yeah, the same Jack Sands you're thinking of, the one who cracked up the Gunderson Europa expedition trying to land at Young's Field, Long Island, in March, 2110. Just a year and a half ago! It seemed like ten and a half. Five hundred idle days. Eighteen months of having your friends look the other way when you happened to pass on the street, partly because they're ashamed to nod to a pilot that's been tagged yellow, and partly because they feel maybe it's kinder to just let you drop out of sight peacefully. I didn't even look up when a knock sounded on my door, because I knew it could only be the landlady. "Haven't got it," I growled. "I've got a right to stay out my notice.""You got a right to make a damn fool of yourself," said Henshaw's voice. "Why don't you tell your friends your address?""Harris!" I yelled. It was "Captain" only aboard ship. Then I caught myself. "What's the matter?" I asked, grinning bitterly. "Did you crack up, too? Coming to join me on the dust heap, eh?""Coming to offer you a job," he growled."Yeah? It must be a swell one, then. Carting sand to fill up the blast pits on a field, huh? And I'm damn near hungry enough to take it-but not quite.""It's a piloting job," said Henshaw quietly."Who wants a pilot who's been smeared with yellow paint? What outfit will trust its ships to a coward? Don't you know that Jack Sands is tagged forever?""Shut up, Jack," he said briefly. "I'm offering you the job as pilot under me on Interplanetary's new Europa expedition."I started to burn up then. You see, it was returning from Jupiter's third moon, Europa, that I'd smashed up the Gunderson outfit, and now I got a wild idea that Henshaw was taunting me about that. "By Heaven!" I screeched. "If you're trying to be funny-"But he wasn't. I quieted down when I saw he was serious, and he went on slowly, "I want a pilot I can trust, Jack. I don't know anything about your cracking up the Hera; I was on the Venus run when it happened. All I know is that I can depend on you."After a while I began to believe him. When I got over the shock a little, I figured Henshaw was friend enough to be entitled to the facts."Listen, Harris," I said. "You're taking me on, reputation and all, and it looks to me as if you deserve an explanation. I haven't been whining about the bump I got, and I'm not now. I cracked up Gunderson and his outfit all right, only-" I hesitated; it's kind of tough to feel that maybe you're squirming in the pinch-"only my co-pilot, that fellow Kratska, forgot to mention a few things, and mentioned a few others that weren't true. Oh, it was my shift, right enough, but he neglected to tell the investigating committee that I'd stood his shift and my own before it. I'd been on for two long shifts, and this was my short one."