more hours from now, when he would be at his closest, would be too
late. He would be too near the end of his air to use it to make sure
of the last few feet.

He looked at the pole in his grip. It was an eight-foot section of
aluminum from the cargo racks.

"Maybe ..." he muttered.

Whirling the pole around by the end, he managed after considerable
trial and error, to slow his wild spin enough to keep the ship in
view.

The only question then was whether he dared to take the chance; and he
really had but one choice. The full orbit would be too long a period.

He estimated as well as he could the direction of his progress,
allowed a few degrees which he fondly hoped would curve him in to a
closer approach at the meeting point, and hurled the pole into space
with all his strength.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that he had cut
his speed enough to bring him to the ship ahead of schedule by a
shorter orbit.

* * * * *

Tremont finally gave up looking at his watch when he found himself
peeping every three minutes, on the average. The immensity of space
was by now instilling in him a psychological chill, and he drew both
arms in from their sleeves to hug an illusion of warmth to him. The
air pressure in the sleeves gradually overpowered the springs of the
joints, and extended them to make a cross.

As far as he could tell from the gauges lined in a miniature row
along the neckpiece of the suit, his heating system was functioning as
designed. The batteries had an excellent chance of lasting longer than
he would.

He began to dwell upon thoughts of squeezing Peters in the steel grip
of his gauntlets until the pilot's fat face turned purple and his eyes
popped. Another promising activity would be to bang Braigh's head
against a bulkhead with one hand and Dorothy's with the other.

_Wonder if they found the gun in my locker?_ he mused.

Finally, only a lifetime or two after he hoped to see it, he sighted
the ship again. His watch claimed the trip had lasted less than ninety
minutes.

He encountered unexpected trouble approaching the hull. Realizing that
he was lucky to come close at all by such a guess, he tried to steer
himself with brief jets from his air tank, and wound up on the verge
of bashing directly into a fin. He avoided that, but had to use more
air to spin back for a more gentle contact.

The metal felt like solid Earth to him as he seized the e