u were a slug, a worm in a
cocoon, awake in an ultra-slow-motion way. In 250 years, you aged about
fifteen. The suits were supposed to have a maximum efficiency of a
thousand years; you came out an old man at the end of that time, maybe,
but it was an even bet that you _did_ come out.

And to keep your mind whole and unwarped, there in the immensity of
brain-shattering space, you were entertained--well and constantly.

Three-dimensional movies were shown on your translucent face plate, so
slow that to a person with unhampered reflexes they would look like
stills. Music played to you, a low drone and buzz that to you was jazz,
classical, anything you selected. The Minute Waltz took several hours to
play in your ear.

Body wastes and carbon dioxide were eliminated, and breathable air
released, by the same principles in use in spaceships. You were fed
intravenously, vitamins, concentrates of everything you needed were
stuck into you without your knowing it, for you lived too slowly to be
capable of pain. The temperature of your suit was even. Audiotherapy was
given you at suitable intervals. You were rescued, and came out of your
suit as well-adjusted, as balanced as you'd gone in. Maybe more so.

Rescued? It wasn't all left to luck. The radio in your high bulbous
crest broadcast a constant S.O.S. Your suit glowed so that it could be
spotted easily, a crimson star against the blackness. Your own life
within it called to every life-scanner within 500,000 miles.

Meanwhile, you were in a damn fine world of your own....

Pinkham finished reading the instructions, and walked around to the
front of the bulky suit. Bill Calico lifted off the crest, Daley removed
the helmet, Jerry and Joe Silver caught the suit as it fell away in two
sections.

And Captain Pinkham caught the girl.

* * * * *

She was slim and full in the places where a woman ought to be so, and
her hair, close-cropped, was black-brown and shining. Her face was good,
damn good, bloody damn fine to a spaceman who'd been out on the ways for
a couple of years; but Pink had the happy thought--it was the first one
he had, before the shock really hit him that that this was a
_girl_--that she would have looked just as good to him on Earth.

She wore the uniform of an organicus officer: just a bit dated, the
lapels too wide by an inch, the synthetic fabric of the jacket just a
little more clinging and revealing than the current fa