-from the outside."

"Why?" blazed the girl.

"We picked you up on an asteroid too," said the assistant pilot.

Pink, restraining himself from bashing Kinkare in the nose, said
reluctantly, "You're right. We can't trust any stranger till we find out
what's going on. Sorry, Circe."

"I suppose you're right." She sat down, a little flushed, eyes snapping.
"Have I the right to ask for protection? I'm just as unsafe as you are,
whether you believe me or not. Please leave Lieutenant Silver to guard
me."

He couldn't refuse. He nodded curtly to Joe Silver, who looked too damn
smug for words. So they'd paired off already? So much for his quick
dream of marrying a spacegirl....

It had never happened to him before, though, and it was a hard dream to
give up, all the more so for its abrupt flowering in a heart that
heretofore had held nothing but love for the silence of the spaceways.
John Pinkham, rugged, handsome, all a woman could want, had been
dedicated to his profession since he was five; and many a wench had
found that out to her disappointment. Now ... oh, well. Maybe there
wasn't room for space and a girl in his heart, after all. And maybe she
wasn't what she seemed.

He led them into the corridor and locked the quarters behind him.

Around the first bend and up the first ramp they found Second Watch
Officer Wright. They knew him by his chubby build and his uniform. They
couldn't recognize his head, even when they found it three minutes
later.

CHAPTER VI

They gathered in Sparks' radio room. That was due to the simple fact
that, aside from themselves, only Sparks was alive on this side of the
mutiny gates. The other officers were scattered--in the most grisly
sense of the word--all over the place.

"Seven of us, if Silver's still alive," said Daley. "Eight with the
girl. Why us? He could easily have attacked us in a body." Five of the
dead officers had been found in a heap, just-used pistols in their rigid
hands. Atomic force was obviously useless against the thing from the
asteroid.

Pink said, fighting nausea, "All the senior officers are alive. We can
run the _Elephant's Child_ without the eleven who died. Maybe that's
why. Maybe we have to be preserved to carry this monster wherever he
wants to go."

"Logical," said Jerry. "He'll have to be pretty persuasive, though. I
hope he knows that."

Sparks said, "The radio's working. I had an answer from the _Cottabus_
that she's heading this way