it. Nothing seemed to happen for quite a while.

"An idea just came into my mind," Lahoma said suddenly. "It's absurd. I
just thought, 'Suppose there is another chunk of tellecarbon out here
and our chunk is lonesome?' The way it has been cruising around the past
few days and ignoring us, it might have sensed another piece like it out
here and be looking for it!"

"That's funny," I spoke up. "The thought just occurred to me too!"

"Me too," Mallory exclaimed.

"Then it must be so," Jud said. "Obviously the thought came from the
tellecarbon in reply to our question!"

"But how can it think?" Mallory questioned. "After all it was
precipitated as a fine film, and you can quash it and even slice it up
without any trouble."

"In science," Jud said, "you don't try to argue away facts. You accept
the facts and go on from there."

"Let's go on from there, then," Lahoma spoke up. "Tillie--we might as
well call her that now that we know she, the tellecarbon, you know,
thinks--is looking for a companion. We might as well help her look."

"How do you know it isn't a him?" I asked.

"Oh, just a feeling," Lahoma replied.

"Oh, fine," Mallory groaned. "We should have suspected it was a female
the way it started galivanting all over the solar system."

"So that's the way you think of us females, Mallory!" Lahoma exclaimed
angrily.

I smiled to myself. A few more remarks like that from Mallory and I
would have the field to myself. IF we ever got back to the Earth, which
I doubted. Secretly I agreed with Mallory. If the chunk of tellecarbon
was a female we had much less of a chance than if it were a male or an
it.

Jud went to the telescope and started looking for a stray chunk of
silvery looking stuff. An air of semi-hopelessness began to settle over
all of us. The chances of finding such a thing were extremely slim.

Almost at once, though, Jud let out an exclamation of triumph. We rushed
to his side and took turns looking into the telescope. There, less than
a quarter of a mile ahead of us, was something that flashed with silvery
brilliance like the belly of a trout in a clear stream. We followed the
flashes and soon figured out that Tillie was not searching for her
companion, but had found him long ago and was, female like, pursuing
him!

* * * * *

When the distance between them shortened, the silvery chunk ahead of us
speeded up. When the distance between us increased, it slowed d