his helmet and began a sickening, thrumming
vibration there.

The harness encompassed his torso like a vise but his legs were
unsupported and weighed what seemed a thousand tons. He could feel them
stretching. Somewhere a coil slipped a fraction. His arms were jerked
suddenly upwards and Johnny knew a sensation he'd never believed
possible. At the same time his leaden feet crashed down on the jet
pedals. For a few, brief, blessed moments the intolerable extension
eased a fraction with the firing of the suit jets.

He cringed mentally from the thought of what was to come and thought
hazily: "This is what the rack was like. This is going to be bad, bad,
bad!"

It was impossible and Johnny went out with the last drop of fuel.

* * * * *

Somewhere there was a queer coughing sound like wind through a crevice.
He strained to identify it but an awful agony swamped him and he fled
before it back into the darkness.

And later still a thumping and a rushing, gurgling sound.

* * * * *

Dim, grotesque figures moved about him or swooped and hovered over him.
He felt an unreasoning fear of them and tried to shut them out. They
were holding him down, hurting him. One was pulling and twisting at his
arm. He shouted and swore at it telling it to leave him alone, but it
ignored him or didn't seem to hear. There was a sudden dull snapping
sound and a little of the pain abated.

The figures flowed together and swirled around like some great oily
vortex but never quite left him.

Then there was a time when they separated jerkily and became the hazy
but definable figures of men in rough seaman's clothes. Johnny had never
heard Breton French before; in his dazed condition the apparently insane
gabble might well have been the tongue of another world and gave him
little assurance. He hurt so badly and so generally that he could not
have determined that he was lying down save for a view of white clouds
scudding overhead.

Some of the men were holding up what looked like a crumpled parody of a
man. He recognized it without surprise as the soaking remains of his
spacesuit, battered and with tattered shreds of outer cover and
insulation hanging in festoons.

A sharp, bearded face shot into focus abruptly, waving a hypodermic
needle. It spoke English and observed passionately either to Johnny or
itself that: "Name of a Spanish cow! What is it in men that they must
abuse