lips, and his eager arms, hitherto kept away from her by sheer
force of will, swept around her in almost fierce intensity. As his hot
lips met hers, her arms crept up around his neck and they stood, clasped
together in the motionless ecstasy of love's first embrace.

"Girl, girl, how I love you!" Costigan's voice was husky, his usually
hard eyes were glowing with a tender light. "That settles that. I'll
really _live_ now, anyway, while...."

"Stop it!" she commanded, sharply. "You're going to live until you die
of old age--see if you don't. You'll simply _have_ to, Conway!"

"That's so, too--no percentage in dying now. All the pirates between
Tellus and Andromeda couldn't take me after this--I've got too much to
live for. Well, good-night, sweetheart, I'd better beat it--you need
some sleep."

The lovers' parting was not as simple and straightforward a procedure as
Costigan's speech would indicate, but finally he did seek his own room
and relaxed upon a pile of cushions, his stern visage transformed.
Instead of the low metal ceiling he saw a beautiful, oval, tanned young
face, framed in a golden-blonde corona of hair. His gaze sank into the
depths of loyal, honest, dark-blue eyes; and looking deeper and deeper
into those blue wells he fell asleep. Upon his face, too set and grim by
far for a man of his years--the lives of Sector Chiefs of the T. S. S.
are never easy, nor as a rule are they long--there lingered as he slept
that newly acquired softness of expression, the reflection of his
transcendent happiness.

For eight hours he slept soundly, as was his wont; then, also according
to his habit and training, he came wide awake, with no intermediate
stage of napping.

"Clio?" he whispered. "Awake, girl?"

"Awake!" Her voice came through the ultra-phone, relief in every
syllable. "Good heavens, I thought you were going to sleep until we got
to wherever it is that we're going! Come on in, you two--I don't see how
you can possibly sleep, just as though you were home in bed."

"You've got to learn to sleep anywhere if you expect to keep in...."
Costigan broke off as he opened the door and saw Clio's wan face. She
had evidently spent a sleepless and wracking eight hours. "Good Lord,
Clio, why didn't you call me?"

"Oh, I'm all right, except for being a little jittery. No need of asking
how _you_ feel, is there?"

"No--I feel hungry," he answered cheerfully. "I'm going to see what we
can do about it--or say, guess