 What happened to Mr. Palugger?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1959. Interstellar Chief Rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray, saying, "Transworld Press is willing to let you have a leave of abscence, if you're interested." The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. "We have conquered the problem of small groups in space—witness the discovery of Antheon, for example—but when there are large groups, control is more difficult." "Assuming no accident in space," Phipps said, "it was a wrong decision. We don't think anything is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal, unprejudiced view. Basically, it was an instrument which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the shoulder-to-shoulder pressure of a crowded solar system. A space-borne metropolis, it would be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew on the return trip. On loan from Transworld, he will have an observer status." Branson detained him after the others had gone.
 He died of his illness.
 He was pushed out of the airlock.  He was beaten to death.  The man in the red mask shot him.  He died of his illness.