"So am I."

"What did you mean, it won't be pretty out there?"

"Because we'll have to look not just for series eighty Gormanns but for
any ships that look as old as ours. There ought to be plenty of them and
any one of them could have had a Gormann radarscope, although it's
unlikely. Have to look, though."

"But what--won't be pretty?"

"We'll have to enter those ships. You won't like what's inside."

"Say, how will we get in? We don't have blasters or weapons of any
kind."

"Your suit rockets," Ralph said. "You swing around and blast with your
suit rockets. A porthole should be better than an airlock if it's big
enough to climb through. You won't have any trouble."

"But you still haven't told me what--"

"Inside the ships. People. They'll all be dead. If they didn't lose
their air so far, they'll lose it when we go in. Either way, of course,
they'll be dead. They've all been dead for years, with no food. But
without air--"

"What are you stopping for?" Diane said. "Please go on."

"A body, without air. Fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch on the
inside, and zero on the outside. It isn't pretty. It bloats."

"My God, Ralph."

"I'm sorry, kid. Maybe you want to stay back here and I'll look."

"You said we only have ten hours. I want to help you."

All at once, the airlock swung out. Space yawned at them, black
enormous, the silent ships, the dead sargasso ships, floating slowly by,
eternally, unhurried....

"Better make it eight hours," Ralph said over the suit radio. "We'd
better keep a couple of hours leeway in case I figured wrong. Eight
hours and remember, don't get out of sight of the ship's lights and
don't break radio contact under any circumstances. These suit radios
work like miniature radar sets, too. If anything goes wrong, we'll be
able to track each other. It's directional beam radio."

"But what can go wrong?"

"I don't know," Ralph admitted. "Nothing probably." He turned on his
suit rockets and felt the sudden surge of power drive him clear of the
ship. He watched Diane rocketing away from him to the right. He waved
his hand in the bulky spacesuit. "Good luck," he called. "I love you,
Diane."

"Ralph," she said. Her voice caught. He heard it catch over the suit
radio. "Ralph, we agreed never to--oh, forget it. Good luck, Ralph. Good
luck, oh good luck. And I--"

"You what."

"Nothing, Ralph. Good luck."

"Good luck," he said, and headed for the first jumble of space wrec