aid Kit hopefully.

[Illustration]

"But we can't open it out here," said Astro. "If Tom is inside, we have
to take it down to Deimos. If we open it here, and he doesn't have a
space suit on, he'd suffocate."

"He'd freeze solid before that," said Kit, not mentioning the
possibility that Tom might very well be frozen already, since the
ship's heating units had been torn away from the air lock.

Quickly Astro hailed the members of the emergency crews that had
rocketed up from Deimos and told them of the possibility that Tom was
inside the chamber. They all agreed, since they had failed to find the
cadet anywhere.

[Illustration]

Kit and Astro immediately took charge of getting the bulky boxlike
chamber back to Deimos where it could be opened safely. Two of the jet
boats were jockeyed into position on either side of the chamber and
several lengths of cable were stretched between them, forming a cradle
for the chamber. Since the jet boats were equipped with foldaway wings,
which, when extended, would enable them to fly at slower speed through
atmosphere, they hoped to make a glider landing at the Deimos spaceport.

Astro would not let anyone handle the boats but Kit and himself, and
only by threat of physical violence was he able to keep the regular
pilots out of the control chairs on the speedy little ships. He might
suffer for it later when the officers reported his actions, but the big
Venusian was beyond caring. If Tom was not safe inside the vacuum
chamber, he felt there wasn't much use in being a cadet any longer.
Fleetingly he thought of Roger, who didn't stand a chance of reaching
Ganymede on a single solo hop from Earth in a ship the size of the
_Space Knight_. The _Polaris_ unit seemed doomed.

With Kit Barnard in one jet boat, Astro strapped himself into the
control chair of the other, and intercoms on, they gently fed power into
their ships. Coordinating perfectly in their maneuvers, they headed back
to the spaceport with their strange cargo.

Slowly and gently, Kit and Astro circled lower and lower until the two
jet boats were directly over the Deimos spaceport. They circled wide and
shut off power together, coming down in a long, easy glide. Keeping the
cables taut between them, so the chamber wouldn't touch the concrete
strip, the two spacemen made perfect landings, coming to a stop directly
in front of the control tower. Astro was out of his ship in a flash and
almost immediately Kit was beside