Serj started to shrug, but he dropped his eyes.

"They paid me," he said in a low tone. "They paid me a thousand solars."

"What good would a thousand solars do you when you're dead, Serj ...
dead of suffocation and drifting forever in space?"

Serj looked up in astonishment.

"Why, you can still reach Earth by radio, easy," he said. "It wouldn't
take long for a rescue ship to reach us."

"Chemical rockets have their limitations," said Jonner coldly.

"And you don't realize what speed we've built up with steady
acceleration. We'd head straight out of the system, and nothing could
intercept us, if that tug had gotten too far before we noticed it was
gone."

He jabbed the white-faced doctor with the muzzle of the heat-gun.

"Get below," he ordered. "I'll turn you over to Space Control at Mars."

When Serj had left the control deck, Jonner turned to the others. His
face was grave.

"That tug picked up speed before I could shut off the engines, after the
cable was cut," he said. "It's moving away from us slowly, and at a
tangent. And solar gravity's acting on both bodies now. By the time we
get those controls repaired, the drift may be such that we'll waste
weeks maneuvering the tug back."

"I could jet out to the tug in a spacesuit, before it gets too far
away," said T'an thoughtfully. "But that wouldn't do any good. There's
no way of controlling the engines, at the tug. It has to be done by
radio."

"If we get out of this, remind me to recommend that atomic ships always
carry a spare cable," said Jonner gloomily. "If we had one, we could
splice them and hold the ship to the tug until the controls are
repaired."

"Is cable in cargo strong enough, Jonner?" asked Qoqol.

"That's right!" exclaimed Jonner, brightening. "Most of our cargo's
cable! That 4,000-ton spool we're hauling back there is 6,000 miles of
cable to lay a television network between the Martian cities."

"Television cable?" repeated T'an doubtfully. "Will that be strong
enough?"

"It's bound in flonite, that new fluorine compound. It's strong enough
to tow this whole cargo at a couple of Gs. There's nothing aboard this
ship that would cut off a length of it--a heat-gun at full power
wouldn't even scorch it--but we can unwind enough of it, and block the
spool. It'll hold the ship to the tug until the controls can be
repaired, then we can reverse the tug and weld the cable."

"You mean the whole 6,000 miles of it's in one piece?" demanded T