there is one thing I must say—" And he looked at his daughter and her lover in turn. "I was wrong in forbidding your marriage. You're a man, Mallory. It's too bad I had to learn that under such circumstances. But I want you to know—at the end—that if things had turned out differently, I—I'd change my mind."

Tim said quietly, "Thank you, sir." But his thoughts were only half upon the older man's admission. There was a tiny something scratching at the back of his mind. Something that had occurred to him, dimly, in the hot chamber above. He couldn't quite place his finger on it, but—

"I still find it in me to wish," said Captain Lane, "that you had been a spaceman. But there's no use talking about that now. What might have been is past. There remains only time to acknowledge past faults, and then—and then—"

He faltered. And Dorothy took up the weighty burden of speech.

"Shall we ... do it now?"

Her hands lifted to the pane of her helmet. For an instant they hesitated, then began to turn. And then—

"Stop!" cried Tim. He struck her hands away, spun swiftly to the older man. "Don't do it, Skipper! I've got it! Got it at last!"

Lane stared at him dazedly. "Wh-what do you mean?"

Tim's sudden laughter was almost hysterically triumphant. "I mean that this is one time a 'groundhog engineer' knows more than a spaceman. There's no time to explain now, but quick!—you have some gun-capsules, haven't you?"

"Y-yes, but—"

"Give them to me! All you have. And hurry!"

As he spoke, he was emptying his own capacious ammunition pouch. Capsule after capsule poured from it, until he had an overflowing double handful. With frenzied haste he broke the safety-tip off the first, tossed the cartridge into the stream that ran through their prison. As it struck, it hissed faintly; bubbles began to rise from the fluid, and a thin, steamy film of vapor rose whitely.

"Do that to all of them. Toss them in there! I'm right! I know I am. I have to be!"

Bewilderedly, Captain Lane and Dorothy began doing as he ordered. A dozen, a score, twoscore of the heat-gun cartridges were 

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