"You better give it to me."

He said nothing. There was a hissing sound, and a faint roar. Far away,
something slid ponderously.

"Pleasant voyage, little ones!" a voice boomed.

Something sat on her chest all at once, squeezing all the air from her.
It was a great weight holding her motionless, squeezing. She wanted to
cry, but couldn't get the sound out. She wanted her Mom. Mom would know
what to do.

She was crushed and flattened into a tunnel of blackness.

Thirty minutes later, the starship _Star of Fire_, outworld-bound from
Sol to the starswarms beyond Ophiuchus, lost all its remaining air. It
became an enormous coffin spinning end over end in space amid the blaze
of starlight near the center of the galaxy.

One tiny spaceship, a small model of the huge liner, sped away. If it
went two days finding no planet, its two occupants would perish when the
small oxygen supply gave out. If it found a planet it would circle and
land automatically. The possibility of this was small, but not remote.
For here at the center of the galaxy, stellar distances are more nearly
planetary and most of the stars have attendant planets. But even then,
it would have to be a world capable of supporting their lives ...

They sped on, in all innocence. She was five. He was six. His name was
Charlie Fullerton. He had her doll. She hated him.

* * * * *

Two hours after the tiny model spaceship landed on a planet with three
suns in the sky, Robin Sinclair awoke. She felt cramped and
uncomfortable. It took her a while to orient herself. She had some kind
of a dream. A dream was a funny thing. Mom said it wasn't real. But it
sure was real to her.

She got up and pushed with her hands. A section of the tiny spaceship
sprang away at her touch, admitting blinding light. She lay there with
her eyes tightly shut, but after a while she could see. The boy was
sleeping. She still hated him. He was sleeping with her doll in his
arms. She took the doll and he moved his arms and woke up. She jumped
out of the open spaceship with the doll and started running.

She ran along a beach. But the sand was green. The ocean hissed and
roared and there was nobody else. "N'ya! N'ya! Y'can't catch me!" she
bawled at the top of her voice. And fell down in the sand.

He caught up with her and fell on top of her and they wrestled for the
doll. The surf thundered nearby. The tide, capricious in the grip of the
three suns, r