nd-Two said. "But
look at the fuzzy lights down on Earth. Hell, is it right for a fella to
be looking down on the lights of Paris, Moscow, Cairo, and Rangoon--when
he hasn't ever been any farther than Minneapolis?" Two-and-Two sounded
fabulously befuddled.

David Lester started screaming again. They had left him alone and
apparently unconscious, inside his ring, because all ionics, including
his, had had to be set. Then, in the pressure of events, they had almost
forgotten him.

"I'll go look," Frank Nelsen said.

Mitch Storey was there ahead of him. Mitch's helmet was off; his dark
face was all planes and hollows in the moonlight coming through the
thin, transparent walls of the vehicle. "Should we call the U.S.S.F.
patrol, Frank?" he asked anxiously. "Have them take him off? 'Cause he
sure can't stand another devil-killer."

"We'd better," Frank answered quickly.

But now Tiflin, having deserted his blastoff drum, was coming through
the airlock flaps, too. He stepped forward gingerly, along the spinning,
ring-shaped tunnel.

"Poor bookworm," he growled in a tone curiously soft for Glen Tiflin.
"Think I don't understand how it is? And how do you know if he _wants_
to get sent back?"

Mitch had removed Lester's helmet, too. Tiflin knelt. His arm moved with
savage quickness. There was the crack of knuckles, in a rubberized
steel-fabric space glove, against Lester's jaw. His hysterical eyes
glazed and closed; his face relaxed.

For a second of intolerable fury, Frank wanted to tear Tiflin apart.

But Mitch half-grinned. "That might be an answer," he said.

They plopped where they were, and tried to rest until the orbiting
cluster of rings emerged from Earth's shadow into blazing sunshine,
again. Then Mitch and Frank returned to their own bubbs to check on the
acceleration.

It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's drum, would
lag.

"Hell!" Art Kuzak snapped. "Get that character out here to help us
inflate and rig his own equipment! We did enough for him! So if the
Force notices that there are ten bubbs instead of nine, the extra is
still just our spare... Hey--Tiflin!"

"Nuts--I'm looking after Pantywaist," Tiflin growled back.

"Awright," Art returned. "So we just cast your junk adrift! Come on,
boy!" There was no kidding in the dry tone.

Tiflin snarled but obeyed.

Ions jetting from the Earthward hub-ends of the rotating rings, yielded
their steady few pounds of thrust. The gradual