 Who is James?
The most dangerous of weapons is the one you don't know is loaded. Illustrated by Schoenherr The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. The sun glinted on black rock glazed by ice, chasms and ridges and bridges of ice. It lit the snow slope to a frozen glare, penciled black shadow down the long furrow, and flashed at the furrow's end on a thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thrown down in the dead wilderness. Nothing grew, nothing flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. "I've tried my hands and arms and they seem to work," it began. It's well on the cards that I'm all in one piece and not broken up at all, though I don't see how it could happen. This suit's got a built-in recorder, I might as well use it. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. "You'll want to know if the ship worked. We got lined up between Earth and Mars, you'll remember, and James pushed the button marked 'Jump'. Took his finger off the button and there we were: Alpha Centauri . Two months later your time, one second later by us. Matt Hennessy, from Farside Observatory, back of the Moon, just back from a proving flight cum astronomical survey in the starship Whale . Whoever you are who finds this tape, you're made. Walking, talking natives on a blue sky planet with 1.1 g gravity and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. The odds against finding Chang on a six-sun survey on the first star jump ever must be up in the googols. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. Look more like cats than people, but they're people all right. "One, they learned our language in four weeks. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them. "Two, they brew a near-beer that's a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale . "Four, the ten-man language team also learned chess and table tennis. People who talk English, drink beer, like jokes and beat me at chess or table-tennis are people for my money, even if they look like tigers in trousers. Maybe that ten per cent extra gravity put us off our strokes.
 James is the captain of the Whale.
 James is the captain of the Minnow.  James is the ship's navigator.  James is the ship's doctor.  James is the captain of the Whale.