possible."

"I did, apparently. Give me the story."

"There's not much to give. I was about to go off watch when the detectors picked up a lump that seemed highly magnetic, and something over eighty million tons mass. We hove to, and came alongside it while Tine look a couple of pictures of the Galaxy and the Cloud so that we could find it again. I sent out four men to take samples, and the instant the outer door was opened these things"--he jerked his head toward the silent guards--"froze it that way with a jet of water on the hinge and jamb. They were too close to use the heavy projectors, and we still had no idea there was a ship inside the meteoric stuff. They were in spacesuits, and got into the lock before we could do anything. By the time we had our armor on they had burned down the inner lock door and were all through the ship. The hand-to-hand fighting was shameful; I thought I knew all the football tricks going, and I'd taught most of them to the boys, but they had every last one of us pinned down before things could get under way. I never saw anything like it.

"I still can't understand what knocked you out. They used no weapons--that annoyed me--and if you didn't put a suit on yourself I don't see how you lived when they opened up your room. The air was gone before they started going over the ship."

"I think I get it," said Little slowly. "Geletane. Four cylinders of it. Did you broadcast a general landing warning when you cut the second-order to examine that phony Bonanza? You didn't, of course, since we weren't in a gravity field of any strength. And the 'meteor' was magnetic, which made no difference to our berylium hull, but made plenty to the steel geletane cylinders, one of which I had unclamped for a pressure test and had left in the tester. I went on about my business, and the field yanked the cylinder out of the tester and against the wall. It didn't make enough noise to attract my attention, because I was in the next room. With the door open. And the valve cracked just a trifle--just enough. I didn't need a suit when these starfish opened my room; I must have been as stiff as a frame member. I had all the symptoms of recovery from suspended animation when I woke up, too, but I never thought of interpreting them that way. The next ship I'm in, see if I don't get them to rig up an automatic alarm to tell what the second-order fields are doing--""You might also put your geletane cylinders back in the clamps when, and if, this happy state of affairs eventuates," remarked Goldthwaite, the gloomy technical sergeant. 

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