a tough job to do. But I'll do it.

The job wasn't a pleasant one. Freedman knew that near the far end of the tunnel, wedged into the debris of the wrecked tunnel, his old ship, the X26, was laying. In the control room, if there was still a control room, Jerry Graham's crushed corpse would be stretched across the instrument panel.

An endless hour passed.

The flight was no longer routine. He was nearing the end of the tunnel. The Cutter, Z1000 had taken the grinding, tearing trip easily, and her plates were hardly heated by the occasional edges she had to rip from the tunnel. He slowed the huge sausage-like ship and watched the instruments closely. Fifteen miles—then only ten.

He braked the ship and paused. Here, according to the instruments, the X26 would be wedged.

Grimly, Freedman donned the oxygen suit, turned on the powerful lamps that would light his way in the inky black tunnel, opened the forward hatch and went out. Ahead and all around him were the dense metals and rocks of the tunnel. The crushing, tearing sounds, always present in this weird place, seemed worse today. He climbed carefully out on the huge cutter blades, down the emergency ladder and jumped to the X26. It wasn't as badly wrecked as he had feared. That didn't mean that it would fly again, or that there was any hope of Graham being alive. He knew that the X26 had hit with a speed that would insure at least a broken neck for near-sighted Jerry.

No sense kidding yourself, Blair, he thought.

He worked his way into the broken hatch of the X26, found a heavy emergency bar and tore the door to the main cabin open. It was as he thought. Jerry hadn't known what happened. The accident had come too fast. Jerry had been thrown to the floor. There were no marks on his body. His lips were parted in amazement, but no horror.

Freedman choked back a sob, picked Graham up tenderly and went back along the wrecked corridor. In the Z1000 he placed Graham on one of the emergency bunks, strapped him down and covered the body with a blanket. His teeth were gritted tightly together. His knuckles were white. He felt little emotion, or rather, tried to steel himself against feeling it.

Back in the control room, he sat down, pulled out the special valve release that ran the Cutter blades and waited for their steady, powerful rhythm to tell him that they were ready to cut.

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