, hurtling through the air much faster than she had
ever gone on foot.

"Baby Two--that is, Lifecraft Number Two--my crash assignment. Good
thing I was down here in the Middle; I'd never have made it from up Top.
Next corridor left, I think." Then, as the light of his headlamp showed
numbers on the wall: "Yes. Square left. I'll swing you."

He swung her and they shot to the end of the passage. He kicked a lever
and the lifecraft's port swung open--to reveal a blaze of light and a
startled, gray-haired man.

"What happened.... What hap ...?" the man began.

"Wrecked. We've had it. We're abandoning ship. Get into that cubby over
there, shut the door tight behind you, and _stay there_!"

"But can't I do something to help?"

"Without a suit and not knowing how to use one? You'd get burned to a
cinder. Get in there--and _jump_!"

The oldster jumped and Deston turned to his wife. "Stay here at the
port, Bobby. Wrap one leg around that lever, to anchor you. What does
your telltale read? That gauge there--your radiation meter. It reads
twenty, same as mine. Just pink, so we've got a minute or so. I'll roust
out some passengers and toss 'em to you--you toss 'em along in there.
Can do?"

She was white and trembling; she was very evidently on the verge of
being violently sick; but she was far from being out of control. "Can
do, sir."

"Good girl, sweetheart. Hang on one minute more and we'll have gravity
and you'll be O. K."

The first five doors he tried were locked; and, since they were made of
armor plate, there was nothing he could do about them except give each
one a resounding kick with a heavy steel boot. The sixth was unlocked,
but the passengers--a man and a woman--were very evidently and very
gruesomely dead.

So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a
man in a spacesuit was floundering helplessly in the air. He glanced at
his telltale. Thirty-two. High in the red, almost against the pin.

"Bobby! What do you read?"

"Twenty-six."

"Good. I've found only one, but we're running out of time. I'm coming
in."

* * * * *

In the lifecraft he closed the port and slammed on full drive away from
the ship. Then, wheeling, he shucked Barbara out of her suit like an ear
of corn and shed his own. He picked up a fire-extinguisher-like affair
and jerked open the door of a room a little larger than a clothes
closet. "Jump in here!" He slammed the door shut.