, blackness,
emptiness. Ebon infinity, sprinkled with far, cold stars.

Thad was alone. Utterly alone. No man was visible, in all the supernal
vastness of space. And no work of man--save the few tools of his
daring trade, and the glittering little rocket bolted to the black
iron behind him. It was terrible to think that the nearest human being
must be tens of millions of miles away.

On his first trips, the loneliness had been terrible, unendurable. Now
he was becoming accustomed to it. At least, he no longer feared that
he was going mad. But sometimes....

Thad shook himself and spoke aloud, his voice ringing hollow in his
huge metal helmet:

"Brace up, old top. In good company, when you're by yourself, as Dad
used to say. Be back in Helion in a week or so, anyhow. Look up Dan
and 'Chuck' and the rest of the crowd again, at Comet's place. What
price a friendly boxing match with Mason, or an evening at the
teleview theater?

"Fresh air instead of this stale synthetic stuff! Real food, in place
of these tasteless concentrates! A hot bath, instead of greasing
yourself!

"Too dull out here. Life--" He broke off, set his jaw.

No use thinking about such things. Only made it worse. Besides, how
did he know that a whirring meteor wasn't going to flash him out
before he got back?

* * * * *

He drew his right arm out of the bulging sleeve of the suit, into its
ample interior, found a cigarette in an inside pocket, and lighted it.
The smoke swirled about in the helmet, drawn swiftly into the air
filters.

"Darn clever, these suits," he murmured. "Food, smokes, water
generator, all where you can reach them. And darned expensive, too.
I'd better be looking for pay metal!"

He clambered to a better position; stood peering out into space,
searching for the tiny gleam of sunlight on a meteoric fragment that
might be worth capturing for its content of precious metals. For an
hour he scanned the black, star-strewn gulf, as the sputtering rocket
continued to drive him forward.

"There she glows!" he cried suddenly, and grinned.

Before him was a tiny, glowing fleck, that moved among the unchanging
stars. He stared at it intensely, breathing faster in the helmet.

Always he thrilled to see such a moving gleam. What treasure it
promised! At first sight, it was impossible to determine size or
distance or rate of motion. It might be ten thousand tons of rich
metal. A fortune! It would more