didn't you?" He kneeled to look at Greg's ankle and the pain conquered Greg's impulse to smash a fist into his face.

"Exactly what I wanted," Greg answered bitterly. "Of course I wanted to get shanghaied on a freight headed for Venus while my family's on Mars!"

"I think it's just a sprain, not a break," the doctor said, running a finger over the swelling ankle. "But we'd better take a picture. Come on." He hoisted Greg to a standing position with unexpected strength, and walked him out of the storeroom to his cabin. Medical equipment lined the room.

"Did it ever occur to you that someday you're going to get the lawbooks thrown at you?" Greg asked, quietly but with hatred. "They stopped tolerating this sort of thing centuries ago."

The doctor laughed. "Fine talk from a man who tried to smuggle himself on Mars."

"You don't have any proof. I don't even know your name."

"It's Coleridge. You can put doctor in front of it, too. I really did study and get a diploma. Then I decided I could have more fun out in space than in some stuffy office back on Earth. Maybe you'd enjoy this sort of life, too, if you haven't congealed completely." He sat Greg before a small X-ray machine.

"I've always wanted to spend the rest of my life fighting dinosaurs on Venus while my family is on Mars and my career is on Earth." Greg said acidly.

"You know very well there aren't any dinosaurs on Venus," Coleridge replied mildly. "It's practically perfect as a planet, with a few gadgets to keep things dry and cool." He looked straight at Greg. "You know it's the most desirable planet in the system but they've discouraged emigration because they need the spaceships to handle the cancer colonies on Mars. It's only tramp freighters like this that can get away with trips to Venus." He pulled the film from its fixing bath and squinted at it. "Not a sign of a fracture."

Greg began to wonder what Coleridge was leading up to. Everything he said appeared to be a case of diverting attention from Greg's problem by talking about Venus' merits. He decided to play along until he found out.

"You think I could find something to keep myself occupied on Venus?"

"Sure, they need smart men, and you can tell the employment agencies that your wife and kids are on the way."

Greg stared at him, feeling the torment return.

Coleridge grinned. "Haven't you ever put two and two together about the population figures?"

"You mean there's a chance for my family to get from Mars to Venus?"

"Look. You remember that they started to send people from Earth to Mars a century ago, because the population had overgrown Earth. Emigration has gone on all that time, millions of people have been sent to Mars, and once they get there they have children and raise families just as they would do on Earth. Now, if you weren't a lawyer, always splitting hairs and quibbling, you'd have guessed long ago what other intelligent people sooner or later realize. Mars is smaller than Earth, only part of it is warm enough for Earthmen—so Mars got overpopulated, too, a few years back.

"Remember what I told you in the bar about metastasis? I thought you'd catch on then, when I tried to draw an analogy about migrating cancer cells and migrating people.

"They've been afraid to tell people on Earth the real situation, because Venus has been held up for so long as the second Eden where we'll all live as soon as the cancer problem is licked. But actually, they've had to ship new arrivals on Mars off to Venus in recent years, because there's no more room on Mars. I suppose they'll break the news to Earth some of these days, formally. If you were closer to the grapevine, you probably would have heard the rumor long ago."

Greg sat there gaping at Coleridge. Finally he asked, in humbled tones: "If Venus is such a paradise, how come you don't drop off there and stay there yourself?"

"Well," the doctor said, beginning to put away his equipment, "I've been thinking of it, but