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complaint other than to hate and curse the Gerns more than ever. There was no more trouble from Bemmon; Prentiss had almost forgotten him when he was publicly challenged one night by a burly, threatening man named Haggar.
    “You’ve bragged that you’ll fight any man who dares disagree with you,” Haggar said loudly. “Well, here I am. We’ll use knives and before they even have time to bury you tonight I’m goin‘ to have your stooges kicked out and replaced with men who’ll give us competent leadership instead of blunderin’ authoritarianism.”
    Prentiss noticed that Haggar seemed to have a little difficulty pronouncing the last word, as though he had learned it only recently.
    “I’ll be glad to accommodate you,” Prentiss said mildly. “Go get yourself a knife.”
    Haggar already had one, a long-bladed butcher knife, and the duel began. Haggar was surprisingly adept with his knife but he had never had the training and experience in combat that interstellar explorers such as Prentiss had. Haggar was good, but considerably far from good enough.
    Prentiss did not kill him. He had no compunctions about doing such a thing, but it would have been an unnecessary waste of needed manpower. He gave Haggar a carefully painful and bloody lesson that thoroughly banished all his lust for conflict without seriously injuring him. The duel was over within a minute after it began.
    Bemmon, who had witnessed the challenge with keen interest and then watched Haggar’s defeat with agitation, became excessively friendly and flattering toward Prentiss afterward. Prentiss felt sure, although he had no proof, that it had been Bemmon who had spurred the simple-minded Haggar into challenging him to a duel.
    If so, the sight of what had happened to Haggar must have effectively dampened Bemmon’s desire for revenge because he became almost a model worker.
    *
    *
    *
    As Lake had predicted, he and Prentiss worked together well. Lake calmly took a secondary role, not at all interested in possession of authority but only in the survival of the Rejects. He spoke of the surrender of the Constellation only once, to say:
    “I knew there could be only Ragnarok in this section of space. I had to order four thousand people to go like sheep to what was to be their place of execution so that four thousand more could live as slaves. That was my last act as an officer.”
    Prentiss suspected that Lake found it impossible not to blame himself subconsciously for what circumstances had forced him to do. It was irrational—but conscientious men were quite often a little irrational in their sense of responsibility.
    Lake had two subleaders: a genial, red-haired man named Ben Barber, who would have been a farmer on Athena but who made a good subleader on Ragnarok; and a lithe, cat-like man named Karl Schroeder.
    Schroeder claimed to be twenty-four but not even the scars on his face could make him look more than twenty-one. He smiled often, a little too often. Prentiss had seen smiles like that before. Schroeder was the type who could smile while he killed a man—and he probably had. But, if Schroeder was a born fighter and perhaps killer, they were characteristics that he expended entirely upon the prowlers. He was Lake’s right-hand man; a deadly marksman and utterly without fear.
    One evening, when Lake had given Schroeder some instructions concerning the next day’s activities, Schroeder answered him with the half-mocking smile and the words, “I’ll see that it’s done, Commander.”
    “Not ‘Commander,’ ” Lake said. “I—all of us—left our ranks, titles and honors on the Constellation . The past is dead for us.”
    “I see,” Schroeder said. The smile faded away and he looked into Lake’s eyes as he asked,
    “And what about our past dishonors, disgraces and such?”
    “They were left on the Constellation , too,” Lake said. “If anyone wants dishonor he’ll have to earn it all over again.”
    “That sounds fair,” Schroeder