ative called his chief, only
to learn that his suggestion had already been acted upon.

"We beat you to it, Lyman," Samms smiled. "The _Silver Sliver_ is out
there now, looping to match your course, acceleration, and velocity at
twenty-two thousand kilometers. You'll be ready to transfer?"

"I'll be ready!" and the Quartermaster's ex-clerk went to his quarters
and packed his dunnage-bag.

In due time the long, slender body of the rocket-plane came into view,
creeping 'down' upon the space-ship from 'above,' and Cleveland bade his
friends good-bye. Donning a space-suit, he stationed himself in the
starboard airlock. Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened,
and he glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the rocket-plane
which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking her terrific speed to
match the slower pace of the gigantic ship of war. Shaped like a
toothpick, needle-pointed fore and aft, with ultra-stubby wings and
vanes, with flush-set rocket ports everywhere, built of a lustrous
silvery alloy of noble and almost infusible metals--such was the private
speedboat of the chief of the T. S. S. The fastest thing known, whether
in planetary air, the stratosphere, or the vacuus depth of
interplanetary space, her first flashing trial spins had won her the
nickname of the _Silver Sliver_. She had had a more formal name, but
that title had long since been buried in the Departmental files.

Lower and slower dropped the _Silver Sliver_, her rockets flaming even
brighter, until her slender length lay level with the airlock door. Then
her blasting discharges subsided to the power necessary to match exactly
the _Chicago_'s deceleration.

"Ready to cut, _Chicago_! Give me a three-second call!" snapped from the
pilot room of the _Sliver_.

"Ready to cut!" the pilot of the _Chicago_ replied. "Seconds! Three!
Two! One! CUT!"

At the last word the power of both vessels was instantly cut off and
everything in them became weightless. In the tiny airlock of the slender
craft crouched a space-line man with coiled cable in readiness, but he
was not needed. As the flaring exhausts ceased Cleveland swung out his
heavy bag and stepped lightly off into space, and in a right line he
floated directly into the open doorway of the rocket-plane. The door
clanged shut behind him and in a matter of moments he stood in the
control room of the racer, divested of his armor and shaking hands with
his friend and co-laborer, Frederi