fumes filled his lungs. His eyes burned. But the effect on the Centaur was greater. He became rigid and turned even more glassy-eyed. He swayed and for a tense second seemed about to fall over. Then his eyes focussed with a desperate effort, almost sobered by fear. "Quintol!" He raised the whip. "Not oshygen!" He lost his footing as Hawthorne banked the ship. Ordinarily this would have been no strain on his Centaur sense of balance. But the quintol was too much for him. He crashed to the floor. When he picked himself up, he stood for a few seconds, stiff as rigor mortis, then he pitched down again on his face. O'Dea unwrapped himself from a chenille curtain. He rubbed his head and stared at the prostrate Centaur. "What a skinful! He looks almost as bad as you, Paul! Must be something he ate. Let's dump him through the lock and hurry back to Earth." "Get into a space suit and stow the fuel away," growled Hawthorne. "I'll chain this critter up and we'll take him home with us. But first, we'll leave a souvenir to those Centaurs on Avignon!" The fuel stowed in the tanks, O'Dea climbed back into the ship and pulled at his space suit fastenings. He looked happily at the well-manacled Centaur, still in a drunken stupor. "The air is better now," he observed. "Let's get on our way back to Earth and—hey! What're you up to?" Hawthorne was ripping the flowery seat covers and soft curtains from their fastenings, piling them near the airlock. When they were all gathered, he shoved them out and watched happily through the vision plate as they floated away from the ship. O'Dea grinned. "You're cooking with quintol, at that. The boys would never let us forget it if we came home furnished like that!" Hawthorne grunted and pulled at Morguma's manacles. He went back to the telescope, studied space ahead for a while. Then he nodded, satisfied. "That one should do," he mused. "Should do what?" O'Dea wondered. "That big rock ahead should be a good farewell gift to the Centaurs. We'll fly over their camp, and—"
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