ribbon, it had frozen into this amorphous mass!

O'Dea's heart was heavy in his ears. His suddenly feverish eyes darted to the apparently-sleeping Morguma, then to the smiling portrait of Mercedes.

Hawthorne nodded imperatively. The ship jolted slightly as the seizure beams went on. The fuel was clamped rigid before them. Morguma stirred and studied them with glazed eyes. His thick voice croaked:

"Whazzhat? Oshygen? Lovely precious oshygen?"

"That's right, Morguma. Oshygen—I mean oxygen." O'Dea brought the chunk closer, trying hard to look natural. "It looks so lovely I'd like to take a chunk on board and sniff it right now!"

"Oh whassa lovely ideas!" Morguma, still clutching his whip and his bottle, navigated by dead-drunk reckoning to the vision plate in the control room's belly. He peered stupidly at the coiled fuel. O'Dea feared that the sound of his breathing would sober the Centaur. He held the breath in his pounding lungs.

"'s funny oshygen!" Morguma mumbled. "Mosh funniesh oshygen I ever seen!" He brightened. "Mush be a rare ishotype! Oh mush be lov'liesh oshygen in whole galaxy!"

He closed all but one eye and tried to read the dials. Furtively, O'Dea turned the telescope into the asteroid belt, and the instruments swayed as badly as Morguma himself. The Centaur shuddered and turned away.

"Broken! All the metersh mush be drunk! Can't eshamine lovely oshygen!"

He started sobbing.

"Oh, come now, old man," said O'Dea, sympathetically. "We can bring a piece of it inside the ship and look at it first hand—"

"Wunnerful ideas! Wunnerful!"

Morguma slapped O'Dea's back affectionately. O'Dea picked himself off the floor and staggered in a great circle to the control board.

A thin seizure beam stabbed at a corner of the fuel, broke off a generous chunk. Under O'Dea's trained fingers, it moved toward the ship, through the belly lock.

Then it was in the cabin.

IV

Hawthorne had been doctoring the thermostats. In the heated room the highly volatile quintol-base fuel started swiftly to vaporize. O'Dea felt his head beginning to reel as the acrid 

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