interplanetary space.

It kept up for a long time, too, because Kim was paralyzed by the broadcast waves. They were kept focused upon him by the psychographic locator. So long as those waves of the Disciplinary Circuit came up through the ionosphere, Kim's spasmodically contracted muscles kept together the two cables which had started everything. But the "Starshine" backed away at four gravities acceleration, faster and ever faster, and ordinary psychographic locators are not designed for use beyond planetary distances. After all, there had been no human beings in space for generations.

Ultimately the tormenting radio-beam lessened from sheer distance. At last the influence broke off suddenly and Kim's hands on the leads dropped away. The beam fumbled back to contact, and wavered away again, and presently was only a tingling sensation probing for a target the locators could no longer keep lined up.

Then the "Starshine" seemed to lose her frenzy and become merely a derelict. She sped on, giving no sign of life for a time. Then her vision-ports glowed abruptly. Kim Rendell, working desperately against time and with the chill of outer space creeping into the ship's unpowered hull, had found a severed cable which supplied light and heat.

An hour later still, the ship steadied in her motion. He had traced down the gyros' power-lead and set them to work.

Two hours later yet the "Starshine" paused in her flight. Her long, pointed nose turned about. A new element of motion entered the picture she made. She changed course.

At last, as if having her drive finally in operation gave her something of purposefulness, the slim space-ship ceased to look frenzied or frowsy or bemused, and swam through space with a serene competence, like something very much alive and knowing exactly what she was about.

She came to rest upon the almost but not quite airless bulk of Alphin II some thirty hours after her escape from Alphin III. Kim was desperately hungry. But for the lesser gravity of the smaller inner planet, which was responsible for its thinned-out atmosphere, he might have staggered as he walked. Certainly a normal space-suit would have been a heavy burden for a man who had starved for days. Dona, also, looked pale and worn-out when she took from him the things he brought back through the airlock.

They put the great masses of spongy, woody stuff in the synthesizer. It was organic matter. Some of it, perhaps, could have been consumed as food 

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