Há uma história obscura de Henry Kuttner que eu sempre gostei: The Big Night (1947 )
Ele lida com a tripulação de uma nave espacial muito surrada La Cucaracha lutando para manter suas finanças acima da água financeiramente, em face de uma nova tecnologia que está revolucionando as viagens estelares - portais interdimensionais. Um dos membros da tripulação é um alienígena.
Começa
She came lumbering up out of the ecliptic plane of the planets like a wallowing space beast, her jet tubes scarred and stained, a molten streak against her middle where Venus's turgid atmosphere had scarred her, and every ancient weld in her fat body threatened to rip apart the moment she hit stress again.
The skipper was drunk in his cabin, his maudlin voice echoing through the compartments as he bewailed the unsympathetic harshness of the Interplanetary Trade Commission.
There was a mongrel crew from a dozen worlds, half of them shanghaied. Logger Hilton, the mate, was trying to make some sense of the tattered charts, and La Cucaracha, her engines quaking at the suicidal thought, was plunging ahead through space into the Big Night.