Daley removed the helmet, Jerry and Joe Silver caught the suit as it fell away in two sections.

And Captain Pinkham caught the girl.

She was slim and full in the places where a woman ought to be so, and her hair, close-cropped, was black-brown and shining. Her face was good, damn good, bloody damn fine to a spaceman who'd been out on the ways for a couple of years; but Pink had the happy thought—it was the first one he had, before the shock really hit him that that this was a girl—that she would have looked just as good to him on Earth.

She wore the uniform of an organicus officer: just a bit dated, the lapels too wide by an inch, the synthetic fabric of the jacket just a little more clinging and revealing than the current fashion, the pants narrow at the cuff where today's were bell-bottomed. She must have been out here a while; not more than thirty years, though. She did not look more than twenty-five now, and the normal life span was a hundred and ten.... Pink snapped his queer thoughts sharply into line. What did her age matter to him?

She was limp in his arms, as relaxed as a sleeping kitten. Her eyes, deep brown, were open but heavy-lidded. He half-knelt, cradling her comfortably, as Jerry anticipated his question and said, "She's okay. She'll be out of it in a few minutes. She's still living slower than we are."

Joe Silver, unaccountably across the room by the life-scanner, said, "Hey! There's another one!"

"Another what?" asked his senior lieutenant, Daley.

"Another fellow—or girl—in a Slugjet. Down that direction a few thousand miles."

As all of them but Pink raced to the screen, the girl began to sing, softly, musically, and very slowly.

"I am sick of this bucketing Lunar run

In this dirty old steel cocoon;

I'm sick of the Earth and I'm sick of the Sun

And I'm sick to death of the Moon...."

That was—what was the name?—the Lament of the Veteran Rocketeer, a ballad that Pink had been singing in his grade school days. He hadn't heard it for more than a dozen years. Probably popular when this gal blasted off Terra.

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