* * *

And she blew. Like a dirty ragged bit of fireworks, throwing tiny
handfuls of sparks into the blackness. Something glowed red for a while,
and slowly faded.

_There, but for the grace of God...._ Paul shuddered in a confused
mixture of relief and revulsion.

He cut back to 4 G's, noting that RVS registered about a mile per second
away from station, and suddenly became aware that the red light was on
for loss of air. The cabin pressure gauge read zero, and his heart
throbbed into his throat as he remembered that _pinging_ sound, just as
they passed the enemy ship. He told Garrity to see if he could locate
the loss, and any other damage, and was shortly startled by a low amazed
whistle in his earphones.

"If Ah wasn't lookin' at it, Ah wouldn't believe it. Musta been one of
his shells went right around the fuel tank and out again, without
hittin' it. There's at least three inches of tank on a line between the
holes! He musta been throwin' curves at us. Man, cap'n, this is our
lucky day!"

[Illustration]

Paul felt no surprise, only relief at having the trouble located. The
reaction to the close call might not come till hours later. "This kind
of luck we can do without. Can you patch the holes?"

"Ah can patch the one where it came in, but it musta been explodin' on
the way out. There's a hole Ah could stick mah head through."

"That's a good idea." Johnson was not usually very witty, but this was
one he couldn't resist.

"Never mind, Guns. A patch that big wouldn't be safe to hold air."

* * * * *

They were about eighty thousand miles out. He set course for Earth at
about five and a half mps, which Johnson calculated to bring them in on
the station on the "going away" side of its orbit, and settled back for
the tedious two hours of free wheeling. For ten or fifteen minutes, the
interphone crackled with the gregariousness born of recent peril, and
gradually the ship fell silent as each man returned to his own private
thoughts.

Paul was wondering about the men on the other ship--whether any of them
were still alive. Eighty thousand miles to fall. That was a little
beyond the capacity of an emergency rocket--about 2 G's for sixty
seconds--even if they had them. What a way to go home! He wondered what
he'd do if it happened to him. Would he wait out his time, or just
unlock his helmet.

Guns' drawl broke into his reverie. "Say, cap'n, Ah've been readin' i