else to do, was busily plying the
Sacred Cow not only for her own horoscope for the day, but also those
of the several persons of whom she was most fond, while carefully
keeping a shielding bunch of paper work in a place to make it appear
that she was officially busy. The captain's horoscope, she
recognized, didn't look much worse than the rest of them, but was
definitely the worst. One of those mathematical jumbles that somehow
didn't interpret clearly. None of them looked very good today.

Out on the rim, things were getting back to normal. The labs were
functioning again, most of them according to their assigned, routine
procedures; but in some, heads were drawn together over the absorbing
diagrams supplied by Mike and Ishie.

Mike and Ishie themselves had already put in twelve hours almost
without a break. Working under stress, neither of them had remembered
to eat.

There was a cough at the entrance to the machine shop, and Dr. Millie
Williams' soft voice said "May I come in?"

The two looked up as the slender figure of the dark-skinned biologist
entered the lab, balancing "trays" with plastic bottles atop.

"If I know you, Dr. Ishie; and you, too, Mike--you haven't eaten," she
said with a smile. "Now, have you?"

"Millie," said Mike, "you've just reminded me that I'm as hollow as a
deserted bee-stump after the bears get through with it!"

"Little Millie," said Ishie, looking up at the figure nearly as tiny
as his own, "you must be telepathic as well as beautiful. Confusion
say 'Gee, I'm hungry!'"

"I'm told that the fate of the satellite depends on you two," Millie
smiled. "I thought I'd just give our fate a little extra chance. Now
drop what you're doing and light into this.

"After that, if you've got a job for a mere biologist, I've got my lab
readied up where it can last till I get back and--I'm not bad with a
soldering iron. Meantime, why don't you let Paul and Tombu go eat
while you eat?"

"Good idea," said Mike. "You two. You heard the lady. We gotta give
our fate the benefit of victuals. Scat."

* * * * *

As soon as the physicist and the engineer were settled to the plastic
containers of food and coffee she had brought, wolfing them down
hungrily, Millie opened up.

"While we're alone, I'm going to speak my piece," she said. "You two
will do me the honor of not taking offense if I say that you have the
most brains and the least consciences aboard--and I hap