each grab the free end of his line and have one comet of a ride, until the plane took off. Then we’d quick let go.

“Well, one frosty morning I let go and nothing happened, except I started to rise. Harry had tied the free end of my line tight to my sled.

“I could have just rolled off, I suppose, but I didn’t want to lose my sled or my line either. Luckily I had a sheath knife handy and I used it. I even made a whizeroo of a landing. But ever afterwards my feelings toward Harry—”

“Stop it, please, Joe!” Jeff interrupted, very red in the face and shaking a little. “That boy Harry was utterly evil. And I don’t want to hear any more about this, or anything like it, ever again. Understand?”

I told him sure I did. Heck, I could see I’d gone the wrong way about it. I even begged his pardon.

After that I just sweated it out. But I found I couldn’t spend much time on books or my thoughts, I’d keep listening for what Jeff was saying to Joseph. And sometimes when he’d pause for Joseph’s reply I’d catch myself waiting for the imaginary me to make one. So I took to staying in the same cabin as Jeff as much as I could.

That seemed to make him uncomfortable after a while, though he pretended to glory in it. He’d ask me questions like, “Tell me about life, Joe. So I’ll know how to handle myself if we’re ever parted.”

But the weariest things come to an end, even duty orbits around Shaula. And so the time came when we were servicing our last beacon—outside the planet Shaula-by, it was. Next step would be a fast interplanetary orbit for Base at Shaula-near.

I was out working—on a safety line of course, but suit-jetting around more than I needed to, just for the pure joy of it, so that my suit tank was almost dry. I’d switched my suit radio off for a bit, because, working in space, Jeff had taken to just gabbling to me nervously all the time—maybe because he figured there couldn’t be room for Joseph with him in his suit.

I finished up and paused for a last look at the ship. She was sweetly slim from her conical living quarters to the taper-tail of her ionic jet, but she had more junk on her than an amateur asteroid prospector hangs on his suit the first time out. Every duty orbit, fifty scientists come with permission from the Commandant to hang some automatic research gadget on the hull. The craziest one this time was a huge flattened band of gold-plated 

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