 What happened to Mr. Palugger?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Sure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were. 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." It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare with each other and the crew. "As I recall," Ellason said, "there was something about stunners." "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 gigantic, hollow spike, the ship would never land anywhere, but would circle Antheon as it circled Earth, shuttling its cargo and passengers to the promised land, the new frontier. 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. The ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. The theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first day out. He said it was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies should have been permitted aboard. What did Captain Branson think of those colonists who killed each other on the Weblor I ?
 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.