SUPERSTITION,
by Lester del Rey1
The Sépelora crawled along at her maximum eighty light-years an hour, as she had done for the four months since she’d left the university planet of Terra. The space-denial generators hummed on monotonously, maintaining the field around the ship where space almost ceased to exist. The big viewing panel and ports were blanked out by the effect, forming perfect mirrors. There was a steady wash of slightly stale air through the control cabin, and the pseudo-gravity on the decks was unvarying. With less than a day of superspeed left, Captain Derek should have been content.
Instead, he sat slumped loosely over the control board, staring with unfocused eyes at his image in the panel, while his fingers doodled black aces, hangman’s knots, and all the other symbo
