suited figure had not moved.

Captain Pinkham said, "One question. Which of you gadget-happy jokers
gimmicked up the scanner on us? Who did this?"

Nobody said anything. Only one man smiled: Lieutenant Joe Silver, a very
bright, very ambitious big cub who was on his second extragalactic
expedition and obviously had visions of earning his captain's bronze
comets within the year. Joe was a rather unpleasant young piece of beef,
thought Pink; but he wouldn't pull practical jokes. He was too bloody
serious. If he smiled, it was probably because he was enjoying the
Captain's evident bewilderment.

"Then it isn't a joke," said Pinkham. "Three of you outside repairmen
get into your suits and bring _that_ in." He gestured at the silent
figure on the motionless little world of the scanner. "Jerry says it's
alive. Handle with care." He waved them his dismissal.

Some twenty minutes later he watched the screen as the three crewmen
descended to the surface of the planetoid, pried loose the double anchor
which the unknown Earthman had sunk into the ball's crust to hold him
steady on the almost-gravityless world, lifted the bulky figure and
leaped upward, like thick but weightless panthers carrying their prey,
into the open air-lock.

The spacesuited stranger had not moved in the slightest.

Yet the scanner, which was never wrong, said that within the armor of
the suit was life.

Pinkham sat staring at the blanked-out screen, and a queer chill began
to crawl up his neck. An old slang phrase came to his mind, and wouldn't
leave.

How come? How come? _How come?_

CHAPTER II

Pink and Jerry and Joe Silver walked around and around the spacesuit.
Bill Calico, the astrogator, and Washington Daley, the senior
lieutenant, sat in front of it on stools covered with Venusian
joerg-hide, going through a routine of flippant gags that thinly
disguised their bafflement. Finally Pinkham said, "When were these suits
invented?"

"2144," said Joe Silver.

Bright kid, thought Pink with irritation. "Thirty-odd years ago. That's
my guess, too."

"October 1st, 2144, is the patent date," said Joe Silver smugly.

"Click, click, click," said Daley. "Your mind is a damn file room,
Silver. It gives me the jitters."

Joe Silver looked at him expressionlessly.

"I just read the date on the instruction plate," he said.

Captain Pinkham bent down and read aloud from the nayrust plate set
into the back of the spacesuit.

"'Bernard Pa