his
set with a puckered frown between his blond eyebrows. He was an entirely
different type, tall, blond, but just as fatuously masculine, as
arrogantly handsome. Probably neither one of them had an ounce of
brains--handsome people so seldom needed to develop mental ability.

Sam, too, turned his face farther away from her. Both backs told her
plainly that she could dress, take care of her needs, with as much
privacy as the lifeboat could allow anybody.

Not that it would take her long. She'd worn coveralls since the
catastrophe, saving the dress she'd had on for landing on Earth. They'd
had to leave most of her luggage behind. The lieutenant had insisted on
taking up most of the spare space in the lifeboat with that dismantled
space warper from the wreck of their ship.

She combed her short graying hair back of her ears, and used a little
water sparingly to brush her teeth. Perhaps it had been a quixotic
thing, her giving up a secure teaching post on Earth to go out to
Procyon IV. Except that she'd dreamed about a new colony where the
rising generation, under her influence, would value intellect--with the
girls no different from the boys. Perhaps it had been even sillier to
take a cabin on a freighter, the only passenger with a crew of four men.
But men did not intimidate her, and on a regular passenger ship she'd
have been bored stiff by having to associate with the women.

Two of the men....

It wasn't quite clear to her, even yet, what had happened. They'd used
the normal drive to get clear of regular solar shipping lanes. The
warning bell had rung that they were about to warp into hyperspace, a
mechanism which canceled out distance and made the trip in apparent time
no more than an overnight jaunt to Mars. There was a grinding
shudder--then a twisted ship which looked as if some giant had taken a
wet rag and torqued it to squeeze out the water. Lt. Harper and Sam had
got her out of her cabin, and finally into the lifeboat which was only
partly crippled.

The other two men of the crew....

She zipped up the front of her coveralls with a crisp gesture, as if to
snap off the vision. She would show no weakness in front of these two
men. She had no weakness to show!

"All right, gentlemen," she said incisively to their backs. "Now. What
is it I must be told?"

* * * * *

Lt. Harper pointed to the ball of Earth so close ahead. It was huge,
almost filling the sky in front of th