d them regularly,
unthinkingly, and as a matter of course. Statistically, the starships'
fatality rate per million passenger-light-years was a small fraction of
that of the automobiles' per million passenger-miles. Insurance
companies offered odds of tens of thousands to one that any given
star-traveler would return unharmed from any given star-trip he cared to
make.

Nevertheless, accidents happened. A chillingly large number of lives
had, as a total, been lost; and no catastrophe had ever been even
partially explained. No message of distress or call for help had ever
been received. No single survivor had ever been found; nor any piece of
wreckage.

And on the Great Wheel of Fate the _Procyon_'s number came up.

In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously
awake--feeling with his every muscle and with his every square inch of
skin; listening with all the force he could put into his auditory
nerves; while deep down in his mind a huge, terribly silent voice
continued to yell: "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!"

In a very small fraction of a second Carlyle Deston moved--and fast.
Seizing Barbara by an arm, he leaped out of bed with her.

"We're abandoning ship--get into this suit--quick!"

"But what ... but I've _got_ to dress!"

"No time! Snap it up!" He practically hurled her into her suit; clamped
her helmet tight. Then he leaped into his own. "Skipper!" he snapped
into the suit's microphone. "Deston. Emergency! Abandon ship!"

The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the
sirens barely started to growl, then quit. The whole vast fabric of the
ship trembled and shuddered and shook as though it were being mauled by
a thousand impossibly gigantic hammers. Deston did not know and never
did find out whether it was his captain or an automatic that touched off
the alarm. Whichever it was, the disaster happened so fast that
practically no warning at all was given. And out in the corridor:

"Come on, girl--sprint!" He put his arm under hers and urged her along.

She did her best, but in comparison with his trained performance her
best wasn't good. "I've never been checked out on sprinting in
spacesuits!" she gasped. "Let go of me and go on ahead. I'll follow----"

Everything went out. Lights, gravity, air-circulation--everything.

"You haven't been checked out on free fall, either. Hang onto this
tool-hanger here on my belt and we'll travel."

[Illustration]

"Where to?" she asked