emergency?” Hansen interrupted.

“Class?” asked Fromer, obviously caught off guard.

“Yes, Captain. There are three classes of emergencies. Major class, which would include death and injury. Mechanical class, including malfunction of Hegler units and such. And General class—”

“Yes, yes, of course, General class by all means,” Fromer said hurriedly. “You see, it’s hardly even an emergency. We—”

“Just what is the nature of the trouble, Captain?”

“Why, uh, well it seems that we were doing a preliminary landing procedure check, and . . .”

“Yes, go on.”

“Why, er, it seems that we can’t get the door open.”

It was Hansen’s turn to be taken aback. “You’re pulling my leg, sir.”

“I most certainly am not,” Captain Fromer said emphatically.

“You really mean that you can’t open the door?”

“I’m afraid so. Something’s wrong with the mechanism. Our technical staff has never encountered a problem like this, and they advise me that any attempt at repair might possibly result in the opposite situation.”

“You mean not being able to get the door closed?”

“Precisely. In other words, we can’t land.”

“I see. Then I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do except advise Sector Headquarters to send an emergency repair crew.”

Captain Fromer sighed. “I’m afraid so, too. How long will it take for a message to get there with your transmitting equipment?”

“Two days, Captain. At a guess, there’ll be a ship alongside within the week. You’ll be maintaining your present position, I assume?”

“Oh, we’ll be here, all right,” Fromer said bitterly. Then he cut contact.

As the single occupant of a large asteroid with nothing but time and boredom on his hands, Hansen was enjoying the whole situation immensely. He allowed himself the luxury of several dozen fantasies in which his name was mentioned prominently in galaxy-wide reports of the episode. He imagined that Captain Fromer was also creating vivid accounts—of quite another sort—that would soon be amusing several hundred billion news-hungry citizens of the Federation.

When the repair ship arrived, it came, to Hansen’s astonishment, to the asteroid, and not alongside Fromer’s ship. He soon found out that there was someone else who shared the Captain’s embarrassment.

“I’m Bullard,” said a tall, thin, mournful man. “Mind if I sit?”

“Help yourself,” Hansen waved a hand toward the meager accommodations. He had no idea why a Senior Engineer was being so deferential, but he enjoyed the feeling of power.

“You’re probably wondering about a lot of things,” Bullard began sadly. “Frankly, we don’t have any ideas about how we can fix Captain Fromer’s door.” He waited to let that sink in. Then he continued: “It took us three days back at the base to find out that when these ships were built, almost five hundred years ago, nobody bothered to include detail drawings of the door mechanism.”

“But why? You certainly know how to build—”

“We know how to build Star Class ships, sure. We’ve built a few in the past century or two. There’s never been need for replacement, really. These ships are designed to last forever. The original fleet was conceived to fill the System’s needs for a full thousand years.”

“But the doors on the few ships that have been built. How—”

“The ship’s we’ve built were exact duplicates of Captain Fromer’s ship—except for the door.” Bullard’s long face radiated despair. “No one ever questioned why the door mechanism wasn’t included in the original plans. We simply designed another type—a different type—of door.”

“Well, you certainly can find out how this particular door works, can’t