her helmet and climbed down through the airlock.

I hung up my helmet and started to peel off the rest of my suit, then stopped and went to the forward window. I tried to imagine a certain amount of grace in the movements as she clambered up the side of the cab and got in through the hole I'd cut in the crumpled roof. But I've never known anybody who could move gracefully in a space suit.

Except Mary.

Helene was not graceful. Not even a little.

I watched her start the engine and warm it carefully, constantly checking the instruments. There isn't much that can go wrong with a closed-cycle mercury vapor atomic, even when the reaction is catalytically maintained to keep size and weight down. But if anything did go wrong, it would probably stay wrong. We didn't have any spare mercury.

After we'd been moving for about fifteen minutes, I went aft and checked the 'dozer. It was riding nicely at the end of a towbar that had been designed to pull the trailer it was supposed to have ridden on. If it would just stay there—

I watched for a while, then finished peeling off my suit and crawled into my bunk.

I still couldn't sleep.

It took me an awfully long time to wake up. When I made it, I found out why.

I'd only been asleep an hour.

"I knew it was too good to last," I said. "What blew up?"

"'Dozer brakes jammed," she said. "Something wrong with the towbar."

That was fine. Perfect operation for twelve days; twenty-six hundred miles covered. Then it had to give trouble.

I rolled out of the bunk. "Well, I didn't think we'd even get this far. Any leaks?"

She shook her head.

Fine. That bar was a nightmare of pressure-actuated hydraulics. Very small, very light, and very precision. I wouldn't dare go into it very deeply.

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