n he saw in his telescreen the little old lady who was Caroline
Gordon, dietician and televisor, press a button on the side of her
chair. Instantly the picture changed. He heard her voice. "You see the
rocket room of the _Alpha_ back almost seventy-five years, a few
minutes before the accident."

* * * * *

There were the four torpedo-like tubes projecting into the cylindrical
room; the mass of levers, buttons, wheels and flashing lightspots.

Halter watched John Crowley, the rocketman, broad-shouldered and
lithe, turning a wheel at the point of one of the giant tubes.

The next moment, he was flung to the floor. He struggled to his feet,
jerked an oxygen mask from the bag at his chest, clamped it to his
face and rushed to the tubes. He twirled wheels, pulled levers,
pressed buttons. He glanced at the board on which the lightspots had
been flashing. Darkness. He pressed a button. A foot-thick metal door
swung open. He stepped through it. The door shut and locked.

Leaning against the steel wall at the end of a long companionway, he
pulled off his oxygen mask and ran along the companionway toward the
control room.

The others met him in the center of the ship.

Crowley saluted the young Captain McClelland.

"The rockets are gone, sir. A meteor."

McClelland did not smile or frown, show sadness or fear or any other
emotion. He was tall and slim then, with cropped black hair, its line
high on his head. His face was lean and strong-featured. There was a
sense of command about the captain.

Quietly, he said, "We'll all go to the control room."

They followed him as he strode along the companionway.

The telescreen in Colonel Halter's office darkened and there was only
the old voice of the captain, saying, "We were drifting in space. You
know what that means. But no one broke down. We were too well trained,
too well conditioned. We gathered in the control room."

Light opened up again on Colonel Halter's telescreen. He saw the
polished metal walls, the pilot chairs and takeoff hammocks, the
levers, buttons and switches of the young ship back those many years,
and the six young people standing before a young Captain McClelland,
who was speaking to them of food, water and oxygen.

It was decided that their metabolisms must be lowered and that they
must live for the most part in their bunks. All activity must be cut
to minimum. All weapons must be jettisoned, except one, the captain