his harness. The fat man's breath became more relaxed and even. Then a question occurred to Pell.

"By the way, why didn't you let me know over the inter-com that Heintz was in this shape?" he asked her.

"You would have cut acceleration and we would have lost time—maybe even have been blasted. If the same thing had happened to me, Heintz would have acted as I did." Her soft, tanned features were hard and single-minded determination blazed from her eyes.

"Pell," she continued, "if I don't come through this, you must deliver the U-235 one way or another."

Pell considered that "one way or another". It sounded ominous and he wondered what it meant. He asked her.

She answered bluntly. "DIC has a swarm of blockaders covering the planet. Nothing can get in or out, except with the greatest risk."

"Have you got any ideas?" he asked.

"No. We are depending on you for that. But there is one way that can't fail. We can drop into hyper-space, evade them, and drop out over the planet. The U-235 is indestructible. They'll find it in the wreckage."

She said it so simply that Pell shuddered in spite of himself. It was nothing more than a proposal of suicide. To drop from hyper-space in the neighborhood of any mass would set up a space-strain that would crush their ship like an egg.

He looked at her thoughtfully. Even in her rough plasto cover-all she was strikingly beautiful. But blue eyes that should have been soft and deep were hard and icy with determination. Her delicate red lips were crushed in a straight brutal line and a beautifully molded chin was out-thrust stubbornly.

Pell chuckled, then said, "You don't seem to remember that you are dealing with a drunken bum whom you picked out of a gutter, Gret. But even though I don't claim to have any ideals and principles, I am a space pilot, not a kamikaze. If there is no better way than that, we won't do it."

She stared at him with disgust in her eyes. "I thought you were a man, not a coward!"

The words stung Pell. Savagely he gripped her arm and snarled, face close to her, "I don't give two cents for your paltry revolution and I certainly don't intend to die in it. Furthermore, I don't particularly give a damn for you and your refrigerated ways. But then I suppose all of you 

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