Ralph."

"What about the airlock?"

"It opened up on me. It swung out into space, all of a sudden. I'm going
in, Ralph."

Fear, unexpected, inexplicable, gripped him. "Don't," he said. "Wait for
me."

"That's silly, Ralph. We barely have time. I'm going in now, Ralph.
There. I'm closing the outer door. I wonder if the pressure will build
up for me. If it doesn't, I'll blast the outer door with my rockets and
get out of here.... Ralph! The light's blinking. The pressures building.
The inner door is beginning to open, Ralph. I'm going inside now."

He was still tracking the beam. He thought he was close now, a hundred
miles perhaps. A hundred miles by suit rocket was merely a few seconds
but somehow the fear was still with him. It was that skeleton, he
thought. That skeleton had unnerved him.

"Ralph. It's here, Ralph. A radarscope just like ours. Oh, Ralph, it's
in perfect shape."

"I'm coming," he said. A big old Bartson Cruiser tumbled by end over
end, a thousand tonner, the largest ship he had seen in here so far. At
some of the portholes as he flashed by he could see faces, dead faces
staring into space forever.

Then Diane's voice suddenly: "Is that you, Ralph?"

"I'm still about fifty miles out," he said automatically, and then cold
fear, real fear, gripped him. _Is that you, Ralph?_

"Ralph, is that--oh, Ralph. Ralph--" she screamed, and was silent.

"Diane! Diane, answer me."

Silence. She had seen someone--something. Alive? It hardly seemed
possible. He tried to notch his rocket controls further toward full
power, but they were straining already--

The dead ships flashed by, scores of them, hundreds, with dead men and
dead dreams inside, waiting through eternity, in no hurry to give up
their corpses and corpses of dreams.

He heard Diane again then, a single agonized scream. Then there was
silence, absolute silence.

Time seemed frozen, frozen like the faces of the dead men inside the
ships, suspended, unmoving, not dropping into the well of the past. The
ships crawled by now, crawled. And from a long way off he saw the
Gormann eighty-five. He knew it was the right ship because the outer
airlock door had swung open again. It hung there in space, the lock
gaping--

But it was a long way off.

He hardly seemed to be approaching it at all. Every few seconds he
called Diane's name, but there was no answer. No answer. Time crawled
with the fear icy now, as cold as death, in the pit of his stom