spacesuit that hadn't been occupied for at least a century. There were five suits hanging in the locker, and I picked the biggest one. It was a little too small for me, but I couldn't complain much on that score. It kinked a little, then drew tight over the shoulders, but nothing ripped when I moved.

I must have looked grotesque in that old, stiff, freakish garment, all bulges and creases. A big flaring dome over my head, feet like metal pancakes clattering on the deck.

But I wasn't concerned with my appearance, just my oxygen intake.

Back by the gravity panel, Pete tried desperately to stop me. His bony hands went out, plucked at my wrists. I couldn't hear him babbling outside the helmet. But I could see his shining eyes and moving lips. His eyes were tortured, pleading.

He might as well have been pleading with a man a hundred miles away—or a century dead!

I was deaf to reason. I was feeling merely a blind instinct to help a woman who had taken on a man's job.

Pete's eyes followed me as I went clumping toward the control board, and I felt a sudden tug of pity for him. If I never came back, he'd miss me a lot. Good old Pete! To make him feel better I flashed him a smile and waved him back.

"Sit down and relax, old-timer!" I said. "I'm just going out for a little breath of fresh air!"

It was just as well he couldn't hear me. He was real touchy about space. You had to treat it with respect. The lads who sailed the seas of Terra before Pete started reaching for the stars with his little pink hands had what it takes, and their lingo is the spaceman's lingo still. But to Pete spacemen were a notch higher in every respect. Nothing riled him more than loose talk about reading the weather by the glass or taking a squint at the North Star. Or going out for a breather on deck!

I thought of all that as I went out. Oh, Pete was a special character if ever there was one.

CHAPTER III

The Mirage Pup

I crawled out into the void on my hands and knees, clinging to the rough hull, digging with my magnetic irons into the thick coating of meteoric dust and grit and rubble the ship had picked up in deep space.

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