seconds to quite a jerk. I spread that jerk into several little ones.

Well, the last jerk came and the line didn’t part and Trompled Love didn’t crumple much, though the Shaula-light showed me several very nasty-looking wrinkles in it. And there I was trailing along after the ship, though out to one side, and feeling about as much strain on the line as if I were hanging from a cliff on the moon, and knowing I was going about five feet a second faster every second.

My idea wanting to be out to the side (and bless my impulses for realizing it was the one important thing!) was to keep my line and myself out of the beam. An ionic jet doesn’t look hot from the side. But from straight on it’s a lot brighter than an arc light—it’s almost as tight as a laser beam—and I didn’t want to think about what it would do to me, even trailing as I was a hundred yards aft.

Though of course long before it had ruined me, it would have disintegrated my line.

My being out to the side was putting the ship off balance on its jet and presumably throwing its course toward base and Shaula-near little by little into error. But that was the least of my worries, believe me.

I thought for a bit and remembered I could talk to Jeff over my suit radio. I decided to try it, not without misgivings.

I tongued it on and said, “Jeff. Oh, Jeff. I’m out here. You forgot me.”

I was going to say some more, but just then he broke in, angry and so loud it made my helmet ring, with, “Joseph! Did you hear anything then?” A pause, then, “Well, clean the wax out of your ears, stupid, because I did! I think we got an enemy out there!”

Another and longer pause, while my blood curdled a bit thicker, then, “Well, okay, Joseph, I’ll go along with you this time. But if I hear the enemy once more, I’m going to suit up and take a rifle and sit in the airlock door until I’ve potted him.”

I tongued the radio off quick, fearful I’d sneeze or something. I had only one faint consolation: Joseph seemed to be a bit on my side, or maybe he was just lazy.

I thought some more, a mite frantic-like now, and after a while I said to myself, Been going five minutes now, so I’m doing about a quarter of a mile a second—that’s fifteen miles a minute, wow!—but out here velocities are purely relative. My suit does a little better than a quarter G full on. 

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