e
vacuum of space acting as the third phase. With a tensile strength
above a hundred million pounds per square inch, a half inch cable
could easily apply more pressure to that anchor than it could take.
There was a need for that strong cable: a snapping cable that is
suddenly released from a tension of many millions of pounds can be
dangerous in the extreme, forming a writhing whip that can lash
through a spacesuit as though it did not exist. What damage it did to
flesh and bone after that was of minor importance; a man who loses all
his air in explosive decompression certainly has very little use for
flesh and bone thereafter.

"All O.K. here," Jack's voice came over Harry's headphones.

"And here," Harry said. The strain gauges showed nothing out of the
ordinary.

"O.K. Let's see if we can flip this monster over," Harry said,
satisfied that the equipment would take the stress that would be
applied to it.

He did not suspect the kind of stress that would be applied to him
within a few short months.

II

The hotel manager was a small-minded man with a narrow-minded outlook
and a brain that was almost totally unable to learn. He was, in short,
a "normal" Earthman. He took one look at the card that had been
dropped on his desk from the chute of the registration computer and
reacted. His thin gray brows drew down over his cobralike brown eyes,
and he muttered, "Ridiculous!" under his breath.

The registration computer wouldn't have sent him the card if there
hadn't been something odd about it, and odd things happened so rarely
that the manager took immediate notice of it. One look at the title
before the name told him everything he needed to know. Or so he
thought.

The registration robot handled routine things routinely. If they were
not routine, the card was dropped on the manager's desk. It was then
the manager's job to fit everything back into the routine. He grasped
the card firmly between thumb and forefinger and stalked out of his
office. He took an elevator down to the registration desk. His trouble
was that he had seized upon the first thing he saw wrong with the card
and saw nothing thereafter. To him, "out of the ordinary" meant
"wrong"--which was where he made his mistake.

There was a man waiting impatiently at the desk. He had put the card
that had been given him by the registration robot on the desk and was
tapping his fingers on it.

The manager walked over to him. "Morgan, Harry?" he asked