meteor field. Maybe it's all true. One thing it really does is make your clothes smell like a vacant lot on fire so people can say, "Ah, he's a spaceman," without having to ask.

No inspiration. Okay, Denby, think it out with your own brains. You've got a brain, haven't you?

Not being very eager to do any thinking about the situation I was in, I dragged the bulger out from under the seat and crawled into it. I had a vague idea that I might fake up some sort of patch for the tube and maybe limp back to Mars. I wasn't proud of it, but it was the best I had at the moment. I checked to make sure there was nothing on the screens, and then pulled myself over to the air lock, sealed the inner door, and started the pump.

While the chamber was exhausting, I tested the lubber line and snapped the end of it to a ring on the inner skin of the hull. When the lock clicked I pulled the hatch open and hooked it back. Then I took a short hold on the lubber line and stepped out into space.

For a minute I wished I had finished the quabba. This was not the first time I had been in open space, but the circumstances had not been so impressive before. Free fall had never bothered me particularly, but it bothered me now, with millions of miles of empty space under me in all directions and nothing in the sky but the tiny hard bright stars looking very far away. And the realization that I was alone, with a crippled ship, and a very good chance that the situation would be permanent, made me feel that an antidote against spacesickness would be a handy thing to have.

After a while the muscles of my forearm began to ache from gripping the lubber line so hard. I let go of it and took hold of a hand rail and crawled back to the stern.

It was a blowout, all right. The liner was completely gone and the jacket was a fused lump of slag. All I would need to patch it up was a week in the shops and a three-man crew. I crawled back along the hull and went through the hatch like a rabbit going down its hole.

I stowed away the suit and belted myself in the seat. So I would have to think anyway. I got out a pencil and reeled the tape out of the accelerometer and began figuring.

It took me an hour, which was not very good. Neither was the answer. I pushed the papers away and started all over again. The answer was still the same. The Aspera would miss the orbit of Jupiter by more than fifty million miles, and my nearest 

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