tood at the lookout
plate, studying the huge disk which had been the upper portion of the
lower half of the _Arcturus_ and frowning in thought. Nadia reached over
his shoulder and switched off the plate.

"Nix on that second job, big fellow!" she declared. "They aren't really
necessary, and you're altogether too apt to be killed trying to get
them. It's too ghastly--I won't stand for your trying it, so that
ends it."

"We ought to have them, really," he protested. "With those special
tools, cutting torches, and all the stuff, we'd be sitting pretty.
We'll lose weeks of time by not having them."

"We'll just have to lose it, then. You can't get 'em, any more than
a baby can get the moon, so stop crying about it," she went over the
familiar argument for the twentieth time. "That stuff up there is all
grinding together like cakes of ice in a floe; the particular section
you want is in plain sight of whoever is on watch; and those tools and
things are altogether too heavy to handle. You're a husky brute, I know,
but even you couldn't begin to handle them, even if you had good going.
I couldn't help you very much, even if you'd let me try; and the fact
that you so positively refuse to let me come along shows how dangerous
you know the attempt is bound to be. You'd probably never even get up
there alive, to say nothing of getting back here. No, Steve, that's out
like a light."

"I sure wish they'd left us weightless for a while, sometime, if only
for an hour or two," he mourned.

"But they didn't!" she retorted, practically. "So we're just out of luck
to that extent. Our time is about up, too. It's time you worked us back
to the tail end of this procession--or rather, the head end, since we're
traveling 'down' now."

Stevens took the controls and slowly worked along the outer edge of the
mass, down toward its extremity. Nadia put one hand upon his shoulder
and he glanced around.

"Thanks, Steve. We have a perfectly wonderful chance as it is, and we've
gone so far with our scheme together that it would be a crying shame not
to be able to go through with it. I'd hate like sin to have to surrender
to them now, and that's all I could do if anything should become of you.
Besides..." her voice died away into silence.

"Sure, you're right," he hastily replied, dodging the implication of
that unfinished sentence. "I couldn't figure out anything that looked
particularly feasible anyway--that's why I didn't try it. We'll pass