helmet and wait. I'll let the air out slowly. The
pressure change will be gradual. If anything seems wrong, let me know
over the helmet radio and I'll yank you in immediately. Once you're
outside I'll give you further instructions. Tools and equipment are in
a compartment that opens into space."

Anti waddled away.

Jordan looked down at his legless body. "I suppose we have to be
realistic about it--"

"We do," answered Docchi. "Anti is the only one of us who has a chance
of doing the job and surviving."

Jordan adjusted a dial. "It was Cameron who was responsible for it.
If Anti doesn't come back, you can be damn sure he'll join her."

"No threats, please," said Docchi. "When are you going to let her
out?"

"She's out," said Jordan. Deliberately, he had diverted their
attention while he had taken the burden of emotional strain.

Docchi glanced hastily at the telecom. Anti was hanging free in space,
wrapped and strapped in strips torn from the useless spacesuits--that,
and more flesh than any human had ever borne. The helmet sat jauntily
on her head; the oxygen cylinder was strapped to her back. She was
still intact.

"How is she?" he asked anxiously, unaware that the microphone was
open.

"Fine," came Anti's reply, faint and ready. "The air's thin, but it's
pure oxygen."

"Cold?" asked Docchi.

"It hasn't penetrated yet. No worse than the acid, at any rate. What
do I do?"

Jordan gave her directions. The others watched. It was work to find
the tools and examine the tubes for defectives, to loosen the tubes in
the sockets and pull them out and push them spinning into space. It
was still harder to replace them, though there was no gravity and Anti
was held to the hull by magneslippers.

But it seemed more than work. To Cameron, who was watching, an odd
thought occurred: In her remote past, of which he knew nothing, Anti
had done something like this before. Ridiculous, of course. Yet there
was a rhythm to her motions, this shapeless giant creature whose bones
would break with her weight if she tried to stand at even only half
Earth gravity. Rhythm, a sense of purpose, a strange pattern, an
incredible gargantuan grace.

The whale plowing the waves is graceful; it cannot be otherwise in its
natural habitat. The human race had produced, accidentally, one
unlikely person to whom interplanetary space was not an alien thing.
Anti was at last in her element.

"Now," said Jordan, keeping the tension out of