Outrider
New Worlds Science Fiction – May 1955
(1955)
James White
illustrated By Quinn

Following closely after his novelette The Star Walk in No. 33 Mr. White presents another intriguing idea—that of landing a damaged spaceship whose navigational instruments have been destroyed. It would be impossible, of course, but it presents a neat drama.

-

	In a glide that was only a few degrees off level flight the ship slid into the tenuous upper reaches of the atmosphere. The thin, practically non-existent air, made an almost solid thing by its tremendous speed of passage, tore at the gaping holes and ragged-edged projections in the once-streamlined hull, shaking the whole ship with a continuous, bone-jarring vibration. Rapidly the dull red glow of air friction grew along the leading edges of its gliding wings, on its blunted nose, and patchily about the torn and buckled plates that had once concealed the ship's radio, radar, and direct vision periscopic installations. Fearfully, like a great silver fish forced into exploring the depths of some strange and deadly ocean, it lowered itself cautiously into the Earth's atmosphere.

	It had to land, and quickly. But its fear and hesitancy was understandable—the ship was deaf, dumb, and blind ...

-

	Gregg awoke with the dying echoes of one mighty gong-like note ringing in his ears, and to the sight of the ceiling rushing at him. The ceiling, after approaching to within six inches of his face, receded just as quickly, and the echo was abruptly drowned by sharp, urgent blasts of the Multiple Puncture signal. For an instant he lay too shocked to move, while the spring cables of his acceleration hammock —super efficient in the absence of gravity—flung him back and forwards across the compartment with a violence that made him sick and dizzy.

	This, he thought crazily, is what the business end of a yo-yo feels like. Then the meaning of the signal registered. 

	Spacesuit!

	Frantically he unzipped himself from the madly-oscillating hammock and kicked free. He skidded off one wall and stopped—violently— against another. The compartment's entrance where the spacesuit hung seemed to be miles away.

	Five seconds later, as he was struggling with the top half of his suit and sweating because of the time it was taking, the alarm siren changed to the long-short-long pattern that meant No Immediate Danger. An indicator light above the door—placed there in case there should be no air to carry the sound of the hooter—flickered out the same information. Infinitely relieved, Gregg did the suiting-up operation with less haste, biting his lip several times at the pain shooting through his arm and shoulder.

	Good thing the ship wasn't losing air fast, Gregg thought, or he'd be a very dead duck by this time. When his hammock had catapulted him against the wall he'd taken a bad crack on the elbow. It had slowed him down at a time when every second might have counted.

	Only when he was encased in the suit and at least temporarily safe did he begin to wonder what exactly had happened to the ship. Gregg had an overwhelming urge to head for the control room and find out the worst direct from Captain Ferguson. But doing that, he knew, wouldn't be very bright. In an emergency like this ship's personnel were required to remain at their posts, and report conditions in their vicinity so that the Captain could get the over-all picture. If Gregg went barging into the control room now, asking questions and offering assistance when the duty officers were up to their ears checking damage reports, he'd no doubt be told where to go—his assistance and himself both. He'd better obey the rules.

	Carefully avoiding the still-vibrating hammock, Gregg kicked himself towards the intercom set on the wall. He plugged in his helmet lead and tried to keep his voice steady as he said: "This is Gregg, in Storage Compartment 2, to Control ..."

	He stopped then, aware by the absence of crackle in his headphones that the set was dead.

	Gregg forced down the surge of panic which rose in him. A dead communications set, he told himself reassuringly, didn't necessarily mean that the control room was wrecked; the collision may merely have loosened an already faulty connection in the wiring somewhere, or some other simple explanation like that ... With an effort Gregg made himself stop his wild and senseless speculations, and tried to take stock.

-

	He was travelling on the express passenger liner Wallaby enroute from Mars to Earth. But not for him was the Main Saloon with its tasteful decor, its soft music, and its almost-constant film shows. As a company employee travelling at a fraction of the fare payed by ordinary passengers, an acceleration hammock rigged in an empty storage compartment was good enough for him. He'd been left to the contemplation of the beautiful symmetry of a rivet-studded bulkhead, and to try, if the constant two and a half G's acceleration would allow him, to sleep.

	But there was no acceleration now. The ship was in free fall, weightless, its drive having cut off automatically in the instant of the collision. That was one of the many safety devices built into the ship, Gregg knew; the Wallaby was so crammed with automatic controls and safety devices that one of the station officials had told him that her crew were taking money under false pretences by claiming to operate her. The ship ran herself, he'd been told almost seriously, and the only difference between crewmen and passengers was that the latter were heavily charged for the ride. Gregg, floating beside the dead intercom set, thought that servo-mechanisms were all very well until something unforeseen happened; then, of course, it was the fragile and inefficient thinking machines of flesh and blood who had to solve the problem.

	But where were the crew anyway? Surely one of them should have come around to inspect this section by now? For all Gregg knew they might be dead. Everybody might be dead, but him. He shivered involuntarily; that was very unlikely. He'd better look around and keep his mind busy or he'd scare himself to death with thoughts like that.

	The corridor outside was deserted but well lit. As Gregg pulled himself along the ladder and net arrangement covering one of its walls in the direction of the nearest cabin, the alarm siren shut off suddenly. Small scraping sounds—made probably by men moving about—grew out of the ensuing silence, and from somewhere came a continuous, insistent clicking noise. Gregg pushed open a door lettered "Engineer—A-drive" and floated inside. A gauge on the wall had already told him that air-pressure was normal so he opened his face-plate to make talking easier.

	Peterson, the Wallaby's Second Engineer, was still wrestling with the bottom half of his spacesuit. There was a large bump growing on his forehead, a lot of blood on his right temple and jaw, and he was muttering steadily to himself. The things he was repeating weren't nursery rhymes. From the way he kept blinking and shaking his head Gregg suspected a touch of concussion.

	"Er, Mr. Peterson," Gregg said. "What happened?"

	"How the ..." Peterson didn't know what had happened—his language while telling Gregg so was vivid. Gregg, who tried to keep a one-track mind in important matters, disregarded him as he caught sight of the compartment's intercom. He pushed himself over to it and plugged in.

	"Peterson!" a voice crackled at him before he could get out two words. "I thought you were dead or something. Give me the picture down there man, quick!"

	Stammering a little, Gregg told the voice that there was light and air, and no outward sign of damage. He added, "... But this isn't Peterson, Captain. Peterson is hurt, though not badly, I think. This is Gregg. Is there anything I can do?"

	"Gregg?" There was silence for a moment, then: "Oh yes, the passenger in Storage Two." The voice became hurried. "You can give Mr. Peterson whatever first aid you can, then tell him to report on the condition of the Drive to me as soon as possible. After that you'd better just stay out of the way for a while. We appreciate your offer of help, Mr. Gregg, but you must realise that we require skilled, technical assistance. Anyone without a thorough knowledge of ship operation and construction would only get in the way. Sorry, but thanks anyway."

	"Captain," Gregg said quickly. "I've some experience of mining and construction in weightless conditions. I could help patch the hull for you maybe. And ..." He caught himself just in time. He'd a most told the other that he'd once served on a ship as well—which would, of course, lead to him naming the ship. He didn't want that. He was trying desperately to forget that he'd once been Gregg of the Allendyne.

	The set made a hissing sound that might have been a great sigh of relief, then: "In that case we can certainly use your help, Mr. Gregg. Can you put on Mr. Peterson now—and Gregg," the voice added, "you can stop calling me Captain. This is Second Pilot Allerton speaking. The Captain is ... ill."

	The engineer had joined Gregg and had already plugged in while Allerton was talking. He said: "Peterson here. What happened, or can't you tell yet?

	No, Allerton couldn't tell him anything for sure yet. The Second Pilot wanted Peterson to check the A-drive unit and the chemically-fuelled landing motors. The panel in the control room said they were O.K., but he wanted an on-the-spot check to make sure. First of all, though, Gregg heard him tell the Engineer, he'd better see to the passengers. Nobody else could be spared to do this, it seemed.

	But Peterson had an objection, a good one.

	"I banged my face getting off the hammock," the Engineer said quickly. "Nothing serious—just bloodied it up a bit—but it isn't what you'd call a sight to inspire confidence in a nervous passenger. Maybe Mr. Gregg here could ..."

	"Oh, all right," Allerton interrupted testily. "What does he look like?"

	"Superficially undamaged," Peterson replied, giving Gregg a careful scrutiny. Drily he added: "A bit green around the gills, of course, but with his helmet on they don't show."

	"Right." Allerton had no time for levity. "Mr. Gregg will you make that your first job, please. Go to the Saloon, help any passengers needing it, and calm them down generally. If anyone is injured call for the Medic, but only if you have to, because he's very busy at the moment. Above all, keep them out of the control room until we've sorted this mess out. Understood?"

	"Yes sir," Gregg said. "But can you tell me what has happened? They'll want to know—-that and what their chances of survival are." He stopped, holding his breath unconsciously. He badly wanted to know the answers to those questions himself.

	There was a pause. Gregg could imagine Allerton in the control room, weighing things in his mind, wondering how much he should divulge for general distribution. Then the Second Pilot spoke a few crisp sentences and Gregg had the picture as the other saw it.

	"Is that all?" Gregg almost laughed in relief.

	"That, as you put it, is plenty." Something in Allerton's voice made him feel vaguely uneasy again. "Don't of course, mention the radio-activity to the passengers—it isn't immediately important and would only frighten them. Better get cracking on it now."

	Gregg left for the passenger saloon.

-

	The strains of a slow waltz—played with great feeling by an orchestra that seemed to be all string section—met him as he entered the saloon, and, badly out of time with the music, eighteen hammocks swung wildly to and fro. Gregg quickly began moving among the hammock cables, loosening alternate pairs so as to destroy their equalibrium and bring them to rest. He saw at once that there were no casualities. The mere fact of the passengers staying put instead of trying to escape from the acceleration hammocks had saved them the bruises and abrasions suffered by Peterson and himself. A few of them were looking a bit green, Gregg thought. To be on the safe side he gave these some simple instructions and a plastic bag each. He went to the tape-player, turned off the music, and tried to look competent and reassuring.

	They were a pretty varied bunch, Gregg saw; not the type to panic easily. Construction and mining engineers, ecological technicians, and representatives of the Earth-based business concerns that supplied machinery and material to the flourishing Mars colony were the sort of people that made up the passenger lists of most interplanetary ships, and the occasional tourist had to be extremely wealthy to indulge in space travel purely for sightseeing. Gregg pulled himself across the room to a hammock where a small, frail-seeming woman of about sixty was lying with her eyes closed, apparently unconscious.

	This, would undoubtedly be a tourist. She probably had the constitution of a plough-horse, he thought bitterly as he reached out to shake the boney shoulder, otherwise she'd never have been allowed to travel at all. But his bitterness, he knew, was born chiefly of envy— envy of a physical condition which, unlike his own, could take normal acceleration indefinitely. He didn't allow the feeling to show in his voice as he began reassuringly: "You're perfectly safe, ma'm. There is no danger—"

	He broke off in surprise as the old woman opened her eyes slowly, twinkled them at him, and said: "I'm all right, son. I was just thinking." The voice sounded small and frail like the rest of her. "I was wondering what could have hit us such a wallop 'way out here." She shook her head in gentle bewilderment, and began talking to herself about cometary orbits and meteorite shoals—all in the highly rarified language of the calculus! Gregg, aware that his mouth was hanging open, shut it and did a mental double-take. What sort of tourist was this ...?

	His baffled, faintly-amused speculation was abruptly cut short as a hand gripped his elbow—the sore one—and pain exploded through his whole arm. Gasping, he squirmed free and faced around. But he choked back the rush of angry words when he saw the passenger clearly.

	"Yes?" he asked, trying to keep his voice and features neutral. He didn't think he succeeded very well.

	"W-what happened to us?" The voice was low and would have been pleasant but for the discordance of fear and uncertainty running through it. Her hair was long and black, and—due to the absence of gravity—tufts of it stuck out in all directions. It reminded Gregg of a medusa, or maybe a drunken golliwog. He almost forgot the throbbing in his arm. As she brushed a tangle of hair out of her eyes, Gregg saw two things—they were a nice blue colour, and there was a glint of anger coming into them. The anger seemed to be directed at him.

	Obviously she had misread his expression after grabbing his arm, Gregg thought; she must have thought his grimace denoted barely-concealed anger and disgust at her show of cowardice, or something like that. Women! He shook his head; he couldn't let her go on thinking like that. After all, he'd been in a worse funk five minutes ago himself.

	"I don't know exactly, Miss," Gregg began, "but—"

	"How bad is it, Mister?" a voice cut in roughly. "What chance have we got of—"

	"What hit us?" a third voice shouted. In a few seconds everybody was talking at once. Gregg wriggled away from another hand reaching for his mistreated elbow and yelled, "Quiet!" With a little twinge of shame then he remembered that he was supposed to be polite to passengers and he added, "Please." The babble of voices died.

	"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, hoping he sounded briskly confident—-the way a proper crew-man giving reassurance about some very minor mishap should sound. "You are in no immediate danger. As far as we know you are in no danger at all." He smiled, then went on: "But in case some of you may become worried unnecessarily, I'll explain the position as we know it."

	As I know it, Gregg amended silently to himself. He was beginning to wonder if Allerton had told him the whole truth. Aloud, he said: "We were struck by a body of unknown size, fortunately moving at a speed relatively small with respect to ours. The collision caused certain safety devices to go into operation, one of which automatically shut off our A-drive and leaving us in our present weightless condition.

	"The collision may have damaged our outer hull— but as not a single puncture has been discovered inside the ship, the damage, if any, must be slight. We have power, light, and an adequate air supply, so you can see that there is very little to worry about. A meteor either kills you or it just isn't worth bothering about.

	"However, we're rather afraid that the premature shutting down of the A-drive will make course corrections necessary which will cause a few hours delay in our scheduled time of arrival ..." Gregg was ad-libbing a bit, but he knew enough to be pretty sure something like that would happen. Besides, it was sound psychology to be overly apologetic about a small thing; people rarely suspected then that there was anything big to merit apology. "... . We are sorry about this and hope that it won't inconvenience anyone too much."

	Gregg looked quickly at the faces of all the drifting bodies which englobed him. They showed expressions of great relief, and little, if any, fear. There would be no panic, which was something. He said: "I suggest you all remain here and take it easy. The crew are very busy men at a time like this, and you'd probably get in their way if you went wandering about the ship—even though most of you would be anxious only to help us. The customary ten minute warning will be given before we begin acceleration."

	As Gregg moved towards the saloon's exit, somebody said plaintively, "But we're not supposed to be hit by meteors. The probability against that happening ..." The" voice trailed off into silence.

	"I know," Gregg agreed. "But just think, you all qualify for the Googol Club now." He was trying to catch the dark-haired girl's eyes, but she'd moved towards her hammock again, still angry with him. He shook his head; what difference did it make anyway? And he shouldn't allow himself to be side-tracked at a time like this. He was needed in the control room.

	On the way out he re-started the tape player. The soothing strains of that wonderful string orchestra oozed from the matched wall speakers, and was quickly drowned by a rising hubbub of conversation.

	"Chess, anyone?"

	"Why can't we have modern stuff? This old-fashioned music just puts me to sleep ..."

	"What's a googol anyway ...?"

	The panel sliding into position behind him brought silence.

	Membership in the very exclusive Googol Club should please them, Gregg thought as he pulled himself towards the nose section. Space was so big, and spaceships so relatively tiny, that in fifteen years of spaceflight less than sixty people had qualified. A well-known mathematician of a few decades back had coined the word 'Googol' in order to describe probabilities of an extremely low order—virtual impossibilities, in fact. A 'Googol' was the numeral one followed by one million noughts, a very large number indeed, and one that came closest to stating the chances against meteoric collision in space. The Googol Club was an apt name.

	The trouble was, Gregg thought grimly, in most cases the candidate died on attaining membership.

	The control room was smaller even than he'd expected, and it was crammed with kicking, floundering bodies. It looked, Gregg thought, like an overcrowded goldfish bowl. Then he had another look and saw that there were only six people excluding himself present, and that the confusion was fairly orderly.

	Three men were moving rapidly about exchanging dial readings and technicalities among themselves in low, urgent voices. A fourth hung over an acceleration chair containing a fifth, working over him and looking concerned. From the amount of gold braid worn by the figure on the chair Gregg knew that it was Captain Ferguson—and he really did look sick. The sixth man, who occupied the other acceleration chair, looked up as Gregg entered. His voice identified him as the Second Pilot, Allerton.

	"I overheard you with the passengers," he said curtly, nodding at a speaker near him. "Nice work." Allerton's eyes shifted quickly to the recumbent Captain then, and there was silence. Gregg, feeling awkward, had his mouth half open to acknowledge the compliment. He shut it again; nobody was looking at him, everybody's eyes were on Allerton.

	The Second Pilot was young, Gregg saw; very young—and he wasn't enjoying this situation at all. His thin, serious face was a pale, expressionless mask, but something that was very nearly panic was reflected in his frightened eyes. The Chief Pilot, or Captain, was the supreme authority on any spaceship; after him responsibility devolved upon the Second Pilot. But the overwhelming responsibility that had descended on Allerton was too much for him apparently, he wanted to get out from under it. Gregg understood and felt sorry for him—and considerably more anxious for the safety of himself and the rest of the Wallaby's passengers, if this was what they had to depend on.

	Allerton said suddenly: "Mercer, what do you think?" His tone was brisk, none of the emotions he was feeling were allowed to show in it.

	The man working over the Captain looked up. He wasn't much older than Allerton, but his mouth had a cynical twist to it that made him look as though he was. "I can't tell how serious it is without an X-ray," he said slowly, and shot a meaning look at the main control panel. "But one thing I can tell you, he isn't fit for duty."

	There was another silence, during which the crew continued to stare at Allerton.

	Abruptly the Second Pilot seemed to get a grip on himself. To Gregg the other still looked desperately afraid and unsure of himself underneath those rigidly disciplined features, but now the fear and anxiety were different somehow, as if sealed off in some separate compartment of his mind.

	"Right," Allerton said. "You'd better leave him then, and take Gregg here and start checking the outer hull. That is the more important half of your job at the moment." To Gregg he said: "Mercer will show you what needs doing; go with him. And thank you for your assistance up to now, Mr. Gregg. We appreciate it."

	The thanks, Gregg thought as he followed Mercer out of the control room, must have been a mere formula of words, a polite afterthought which Gregg's non-crew status made necessary. But Gregg didn't mind Allerton treating him as one of the crew, He hadn't minded it ten years ago ...

	Ten years ago.

	Gregg had been Engineer on the Allendyne, a two-man freighter and one of the first to be powered solely by the Allen Drive. The A-drive, though a fast and highly-economical method of propulsion, had one serious drawback—it couldn't function within an atmosphere. That drawback didn't apply to the Allendyne however, because she was designed to remain in the vacuum of space until she fell apart through old age. Small, chemically-powered ferry rockets loaded or unloaded her cargoes while she held orbit well out in space. She was a slab-sided, aesthetically repulsive contraption—girders and grapples and cargo netting sprouted all over her—but functionally she was just about perfect. And she was fast.

	The Allendyne broke speed and distance records, made new ones, and then broke those the very next trip. And so she continued, winning fame if not fortune for herself and her crew, until that last trip between Luna and Mars Station ...

-

	In those days there were no automatic controls or emergency cutoffs for the A-drive. When the delicate balance of the coils that focussed and accelerated the tremendous beam of ionised particles which powered the ship went out of alignment, and the defect could not be remedied, then nothing much could be done. The sweat broke on Gregg's back and forehead as he remembered it—the Drive going on the blink and beginning to deliver a wildly-variable thrust when they were two-thirds of the way to Mars, the battering they'd taken from acceleration that was five G's one minute, two G's the next, and anything from one to ten G's the minute after that. For days they'd been stuck in wet and stinking spacesuits—the erratic acceleration was shaking the Allendyne apart, it leaked air in every section—navigating by sheer guesswork. If there'd been chemical motors to fall back on they could have limped home on those. But they had to rely on a cranky electronic drive or else drift until they starved to death. The number of spaceships in existence was still too few for there to be any hope of rescue.

	Somehow they had managed to kick themselves into an orbit around Mars. But when men from the station came to investigate, the Allendyne's Captain was dead from internal injuries, and Gregg had so many organs displaced that his X-rays looked scarcely human.

	The Medics did a good job on him though, and in the weightlessness of the Mars space station the badly-strained heart mended itself and his displaced liver and etceteras worked themselves back into position —at least, so they had told him. But he had never joined another ship, though that was the only sort of life he wanted then—as Engineer he felt to blame for the whole Allendyne mess. Instead he'd taken a construction job on Deimos, always being careful to avoid any sort of high-acceleration travel.

	The thought of high acceleration, and the memory of those three days of crushing, twisting pressure and the choking nausea, even after, ten years, still made him feel like ...

	"Are you sick or something?" The voice of Mercer beside him brought Gregg back to the present with a jolt. He rubbed sweat off his forehead with a hasty palm, and said quickly: "No, just banged my elbow. It's nothing."

	"Maybe I'd better have a look before we go out ..." Mercer began.

	Gregg shook his head. "What happened to Captain Ferguson?" He wanted to change the subject.

	"I didn't see it myself," Mercer replied. "Allerton and I were off duty. I think he must have been helping me the way he usually does —you know, running out our retractable radar and communications gear in readiness for Turnover. To get at my control panel more easily from his seat he'd undone all but one of his straps, the one around his middle. When the crash flung him against it, it must have cut him in two." He stopped talking as they reached the airlock. Giving Gregg's open helmet a slap he said: "Seal up!"

	So that was the aloof and awe-inspiring Captain Ferguson who had briefly shaken hands with him before take-off, Gregg thought as he closed his face-plate. Not the near-godlike commander of a super ship, but instead a kindly human being who didn't mind doing part of a crew-man's work for him. It had been a mistake, but there was an excuse for it.

-

	Due to the interference set up by the ship's A-drive, radio communication of any sort was impossible while it was in operation. Radio checks and reports were made at Turnover time—a period lasting usually half an hour—when the Drive was shut off and the ship swapped ends preparatory to begin decellerating on the second half of its journey. Turnover was a very busy time for the communications officer, because all the vital equipment that would later be used in landing had to be checked, as well as the routine reports transmitted to his destination. It was the only period during which the communications man worked, and then he worked hard. For the rest of the voyage there was nothing for him to do at all. That was the reason the Wallaby's radioman doubled as ship's medical officer.

	And even then, Gregg knew, Mercer's job was absurdly easy, requiring maybe six hours actual work per voyage. But when something like this turned up ...

	"All tight?" Mercer's voice came suddenly through the helmet phones. Gregg nodded, and his suit creaked faintly as Mercer broke the outer seal of the lock and air pressure disappeared. He attached safety lines to Mercer and himself, moved the welder they'd be using into a handier position, and watched the port swing slowly open. Half way open it stuck.

	Mercer looked at the port as if he couldn't believe his eyes. He pushed at it with his hands, then braced himself and shoved with both feet. Looking suddenly worried he wriggled his head and shoulders through the narrow opening. Over the phones Gregg heard a sharply-indrawn breath, then Mercer's waist and legs followed his head and shoulders through the opening.

	When nothing had happened for what to Gregg seemed a very long time, he said testily: "I'm still here, you know."

	"Uh, I forgot." The voice was barely recognisable as Mercer's. After a pause it went on: "I'll give you a hand out. And you can leave the welder, we don't need it."

	When Gregg had his foot magnets anchored firmly on the outer hull and had taken a look around, he saw what Mercer meant about not needing the welder. He found himself giggling suddenly, and shut his jaws with a snap.

	What they needed was a new outer hull.

	Every inch that he could see was covered with deep jagged-edged scratches, all running in the fore and aft direction. Some of the scratches were nearly an inch deep, and when one of these intersected a join in the hull plating, the metal was wrinkled and buckled like so much tinfoil. A few yards from Gregg, something that had once been a forty-foot retractable antenna system was nothing but a mangled stump that poked like some alien, metallic flower from its recess. Of the sliding panels which had covered it in its retracted position there was no sign at all; Gregg supposed they'd been torn away. But the ship's great, triangular gliding wings with their razor sharp leading edges seemed to have escaped damage completely. The stabilising fins were in one piece, too.

	Gregg gazed about him with the objective curiosity which the dreamer brings to bear on a particularly horrible nightmare—when he is lucky enough to be aware that he is dreaming. This was impossible. No meteorite could damage a hull in this way; nothing he knew of could do it. Gregg swallowed and said as much to Mercer.

	"Just under the skin is the most vulnerable spot," the radioman said softly, apparently talking to himself. Gregg wondered briefly whether it was the Communications or Medical half of the officer doing the talking, and if Mercer as well as Peterson had banged his head in the collision. He didn't like the sound of the radioman's voice, and the look in the other's eyes made him distinctly uneasy.

	Mercer straightened. "I'd better check anyway," he said in the same toneless voice, and began sliding his magnetised boots over the hull towards the stern. Gregg followed.

	By some miracle the outside extensions of the A-drive were undamaged, so also was the chemically-fuelled landing motor. Mercer and himself worked slowly from the stern forwards, examining every bent and buckled plate—and the wiring under them if it was visible. Mercer said very little, and Gregg didn't feel as if he was being any help at all. What- was biting the other anyway?

	At the bows, a few strands of steel wire deeply embedded in the plating told them the nature of the 'meteor' that had struck the ship. Some unknown ship at a time also unknown had lost its cargo net. The Wallaby had found it.

	Mercer became quieter than ever.

	In an effort to get a little conversation going Gregg said: "This is going to be a big loss to the company, isn't it? I mean, it would be cheaper to build a new ship than to repair this one. Luckily there's nothing wrong with our Drive or fuel tanks, though, or the controls. They'll be able to salvage those ..." Gregg's attempt at conversation died and he felt his ears and face getting hot with embarrassment. Then he began to feel mad angry.

	Mercer was looking at him, not saying anything. The look was of such withering scorn that Gregg felt like a child—and he hadn't been very bright as a child. Gregg didn't deserve a look like that from anybody. He was no tourist; he'd been space personnel once himself, the same as Mercer. He gritted his teeth in sheer rage and frustration. If there'd been enough air to support life outside his suit, there would have been a lovely fight under way just about now.

	Mercer broke the silence at last.

	"Will you please stop yapping about company losses and repair costs—you've no idea just how important I don't consider them. Look around you. Use the thing you call a brain as well as your eyes. Look there!" He indicated the Wallaby's once-sharp prow, now blunted and buckled, and with a tangle of wiring and small components oozing from between the damaged plating. "And there!" Mercer's finger pointed to the direct vision ports, then quickly to another section of the ship. "Can't you see that—"

	"We're knocked about a bit, certainly," Gregg broke in angrily. "But that will be easily fixed on Earth. I certainly don't see why you're so blasted sarcastic about it."

	"No, you don't see," Mercer said, and cursed. It wasn't a very bad swear-word, but Gregg had never heard any syllable used with such awful intensity. Then the radioman's manner changed abruptly and he went on: "Space accidents are funny things, Mr. Gregg. At the time they happen it isn't always possible to tell how serious they are. Take this case, for instance.

	"This ship is a total loss—with all hands."

	As he moved towards the half-open airlock, he added self-consciously, "Er, sorry if I was impolite back there, Mr. Gregg ..."

-

	Nine men were packed into the Wallaby's tiny control room—the ship's full crew and Gregg—but the situation was too serious for anyone to see anything humorous in that ludicrous tangle of bodies. Mercer had just finished reporting his findings for the second time. Nobody had anything to say.

	"On the face of it this looks hopeless," Allerton said at last. "But if there's a solution, we've got to find it now—or at least during the next couple of hours. Any ideas, please? Quickly." He was almost pleading with them.

	Ever since Mercer had told him that the passengers and crew of the Wallaby were as good as dead, Gregg had been feeling more confused than frightened. At first he had thought Mercer guilty of a joke in rather poor taste, but the grim faces of the crew told him that they took the radioman's report seriously enough. But it seemed so silly. How could a ship be lost when it hadn't a single leak and it was fully powered and manned ...?

	Nobody was talking now, anyway. Gregg cleared his throat and said awkwardly, "I don't understand this. Why are things hopeless, and why are the next couple of hours important? We've light, air, power—"

	"But we've no radio!" Mercer interrupted, angry impatience at this seeming stupidity putting a hard edge on his voice. "I don't see—-"

	"Listen!" Mercer said. "You know what hit us. You saw the piece of cargo netting embedded in the nose, and the state the outer hull is in. But just so's you'll understand fully what happened, I'll tell you the whole sad story from the beginning—then maybe you'll be able to suggest something helpful ..."

	Gregg felt his ears beginning to burn again. Why did Mercer always make him feel about six years old? The radioman's words were polite enough, but the way he said them made it very plain that he considered Gregg a hindrance, if anything.

	With an effort Gregg forced down his rising anger. Maybe it wasn't Mercer's fault; maybe it was himself who was being too touchy. It was downright stupid of him to expect the niceties of polite conversation from everybody at a time like this; he must look an awful stuffed shirt to them. Gregg tried to absorb the information content of the words, and not their tone, as Mercer continued :

	"About an hour ago this ship hit—and ran through—a cargo net belonging to another ship. A cargo net is made of fine steel cable, highly flexible, and is anything up to three hundred square yards in area. It's used for transporting cargo on the outside of a ship's hull when the ship in question doesn't intend landing on a planet where air resistance would make streamlining necessary. A ship doesn't often lose its cargo net, but overloading, a sudden change of acceleration, or faulty fastening has been known to cause one to tear free of its ship. When this happens, the springy net opens out to its full area, forming a rare but very dangerous menace to navigation. So rare that we are the first to find out how deadly a menace it is."

	Everyone knew all this, of course; but they listened closely. The simple statement of the problem facing them might suggest some line of attack which would never occur to them through dividing it up into highly technical and specialised pidgeon-holes. Gregg hoped so anyway. .

	"Travelling at a velocity relatively small with respect to ours—any greater and we'd not be talking about it now—this man-made meteor hit us and went past.

	"It practically sand-papered us flat."

	Mercer took a deep breath and let it out by his nose. As radioman, this was the part which affected him most strongly. He continued: "Our retractable radio gear had been run out at the time, ready for use when the Drive shut down during Turnover, and for general testing. It was ripped away. All of it.

	"The Approach and Landing radar, the fore and aft vision pick-ups, and the radio-altimeter and air-speed indicator—all of which were set more or less flush with the outer skin—are now heavily abraded junk. We can't call for help. We can't see to land. And if we were stupid enough to try landing blind, we can't have a 'talk-down' because we've no receiver. We're deaf, dumb, and blind—completely blind, because the direct vision ports are so badly scratched we can't see through them.

	"And don't ask about safety devices and alternate circuits," Mercer anticipated as Gregg opened his mouth to put exactly that question. "The ship has them, all right, but they were under the outer skin, too. You know, this ship could have taken any ordinary collision—it could have as many punctures as a sieve—and still remain fully operable. But this was no ordinary collision. Instead of knocking a hole in us the way a meteor is supposed to, this one peeled us like an orange.

	"The circuits which haven't been completely ruined are in such a mess that it would take weeks to salvage anything useable from them, and then building a transmitter while wearing a spacesuit is practically impossible. But we haven't got weeks, we've only a few hours—"

	"But why a few hours?" Gregg interrupted. He was beginning to realise the full extent of the disaster, but surely somebody would be able to think of something, given time. The ship was only half-way between Mars and Earth. What was the big rush?

	"Our course has been pre-set and timed," Mercer explained patiently. "Two-and-a-half G's acceleration from Mars to Turnover point, then half-an-hour for swapping ends and general checking up, followed by two-and-a-half G's decelleration to Earth. Once every five hours, acceleration is cut to one G to allow for natural functions, but that has been pre-calculated, too. That means we have to stick closely to our flight plan if we want to reach Earth in our present blinded state."

	Mercer glanced quickly at his watch, then went on: "But the premature shutting down of the Drive when we hit the net upset the calculations—acceleration ceased approximately two hours earlier than expected. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, decelleration must be delayed by exactly the same time. In effect this means that the usual half hour Turnover period is extended to a little under six hours, and two of those are gone already.

	"A method of landing the ship must be found within the four hours of weightless flight remaining before decelleration begins, because we can't do a thing during it but lie down, and when we arrive there won't be time to think or do anything." Mercer's mouth went through the motions of smiling, but his heart wasn't in it. "Add to that the fact of gradually mounting radio-activity in Storage Four—caused by the collision scattering the lead shielding bricks around the shipment of Mars-produced synthetic isotopes—which will not rise to fatal intensity if we can land and get away from this ship on time.

	"That, Mr. Gregg, is the reason for all the rush."

-

	Gregg wasn't really on a crippled ship, listening to a crew who intended flying her blindfold into a planet. It was silly, he told himself desperately; things like that didn't happen. But there was an ache in his stomach that wasn't from hunger, and the room temperature had nothing to do with the cold sweat that prickled suddenly on his forehead and back. This was true all right, and he'd just thought of something else ...

	The Wallaby might follow its pre-calculated course, but would the Earth be waiting at the end of it? In six hours Earth would have moved a considerable distance along her orbit, and—Gregg felt his throat go dry at the thought—supposing the planet's orbital motion was towards them. They'd smash right into it.

	Faces became even more white and strained as he relayed that thought to the others in the room. They hadn't thought of that.

	Allerton reached for a scratch-pad and began doing some hasty calculations. Finished, he looked up and said: "It's all right. We'll be overtaking the Earth in its orbit, so the six-hour delay will mean that we come to rest a couple of thousand miles short. We can use the extra elbow room.

	"But," he ended, his voice cutting sharply through the general sigh of relief, "We've still got to land, remember."

	"Let's stop trying to fool ourselves," said a voice suddenly. It sounded, Gregg thought, like the Engineer, Peterson. "We can't possibly land, and you, as Pilot, know that better than any of us. We're dead ducks, the lot of us, and the sooner we admit it to ourselves the better."

	Allerton didn't reply, but sat staring down at his hands. Several others in the room nodded their heads. They all agreed with him.

	"What's the matter with you all?" Gregg burst out, fear as well as anger sending his voice up in pitch. "You can't just give in like this. There must be something ..." An idea hit him suddenly. "What about the suit radios? And—and couldn't we circle Earth under power? The flare from the A-drive would certainly be seen, and somebody would want to investigate—"

	"But we can't see the Earth to circle it," Mercer interrupted harshly. "And there's the radio-activity, remember. We can't hang around until someone gets curious, we'd be dead by that time. I tell you it's hopeless."

	Gregg shut up.

	It really was hopeless. Gregg admitted that now. Any hopes he had had stemmed solely from his own ignorance of the workings of the ship. The crew were just as anxious to live as he was, but unlike him, they knew when they were beaten.

	This was such a stupid sort of disaster. Ships had crashed, blown up and sometimes torn themselves apart through uncontrolled acceleration—with the gory demise of all hands. But here nobody— with the exception of Captain Ferguson—had been hurt. No bodies smashed flat by acceleration, or burst open by explosive decompression. All were sound in wind and limb. And all were as good as dead already.

-

	Gregg felt anger growing in him again, rebellious anger. Some crazy Fate must have ordained that he perish in a space-wreck, and it was going to the most fantastic lengths to make sure he did just that. When he had barely escaped with his life from the old Allendyne, he'd sworn that he was through with space-travel. That insane Fate must have gnashed its teeth and frothed at the mouth then—but not for long. If Gregg—either through injury or sheer yellow cowardice, or both—-would have nothing further to do with spaceships, then Fate would have to manoeuvre things so that he would have to take another trip, so that it could take another crack at him. And the second time it wouldn't miss.

	With great cunning it arranged an understanding medical officer on Mars station, a company representative on the planet itself who was a real nice guy, and a construction job on the new Mars station which was to be hollowed out of the rock of Deimos. That last bit hadn't been hard, because a lot of people were needed for construction. But it had gone to a lot of trouble to see that Gregg made a good showing in his job, and gained rapid promotion. After several occasions when Gregg's—or Fate's—quick thinking saved the company a fair-sized fortune in material when someone miscalculated heights and velocities while moving structural members, he suddenly found himself second-in-charge of the project, and then heading it. He liked the work, he did well at it, and the company liked a man who never seemed to want Earth-leave.

	When the new Mars station was completed, Gregg was an important man. So important that other jobs were mentioned. Would Mr. Gregg like to take charge of the proposed new station on Titan? Certainly he would, it was a wonderful opportunity. Would Mr. Gregg then present himself on Earth for a top-level conference on the matter?

	Mr. Gregg wouldn't.

	But the understanding M.O. and the nice guy who had once been Gregg's boss ganged up on him and told him not to be a fool. He was throwing away the chance of a lifetime over a silly neurosis. Besides, the Wallaby was the safest thing in space. Fate rubbed its hands and beamed with glee. It began twisting and stretching the laws of probability to utterly fantastic lengths. This time it wouldn't miss.

	And when Gregg ventured out into space again—smack!

	The eyes of all the crew watching him made Gregg abruptly aware that he was talking to himself, and in a not particularly low undertone. Embarrassed, he wondered how long that had been going on, but Allerton relieved the situation by drawing the attention away from him.

	"I suppose," the Second Pilot said, "we should tell the passengers." He sounded doubtful about it.

	An argument started about whether or not to tell the passengers, but it was a dispirited thing. Time dragged by, the way it does when there's nothing whatever to do. Like gaol, Gregg thought, or being buried alive, which was a closer simili—buried in a great big complicated coffin that had cost more than a pyramid, with company. It was a great pity about the company, some of them were real nice people.

	He thought about the girl with the blue eyes and mussed hair who was still probably mad at him. She didn't deserve this. Or that nice old lady who had spouted higher mathematics at him when he'd expected hysterics ... Gregg laughed softly in spite of himself.

	He had to tell the crew-man beside him what he'd found to laugh about.

	"Oh, that's Dr. Townsley," the man explained, "the Dr. Townsley. She was Chief Astronomer at Luna Observatory for a while. A mathematical genius, a quiz kid who kept on getting better as she grew up. She's a very nice sort, personally, though."

	"You know," Gregg mused, "if we knew our time of collision, our velocity, mass and so on with complete accuracy, we should be able to land by dead reckoning alone—"

	"We do not know those things with fair accuracy," the other interrupted. "But it wouldn't work. You're forgetting stratospheric winds—which are completely unpredictable—and the surface of the Earth itself. We'd smash into a mountain top, or come to rest a couple of thousand feet above an ocean." He shook his head. "It's hopeless. What you need to land a ship is constant and accurate information on mass, thrust, air-resistance, velocity, and distance from the surface, and for that," he ended grimly, "you need a full set of landing instruments. We haven't any."

-

	Velocity, mass, distance. Gregg felt himself sweating again. The other's words were repeating themselves over and over inside his head, louder and louder with each repetition. His skull felt as if it would come apart any second with the sheer, thundering volume of those three words. Desperately he willed himself to stop, to go back to the sharing of the crew's despair and quiet resignation. If he didn't do that, Gregg knew, then the idea lying behind those three words would come fully formed to his mind. He didn't want that to happen. He couldn't go through that again!

	It was a solution of sorts, a way out of this mess for himself and everyone else. But he couldn't tell them about it. He'd bite his tongue out first, he'd …

	He was two people; Gregg, and somebody else. He was fighting with all the power he had to keep his mouth shut tight. But somebody else with a will just a little stronger than his was forcing it open, and forcing his lips into forming words that he did not want to say :

	"I ... I've got an idea."

	Shut up? Gregg screamed silently at that hateful other inhabitant of his mind. Do you want to be stuck in a suit for days on end, with acceleration and your own stink tying your inside into knots? It would kill you. I know it, because I've been through it once ...

	But the stupid and suicidal other part of his mind would not shut up. Haltingly, he heard his voice begin to tell the men in the control room about his job on Deimos, and the abilities needed for it. And about the time a temporary structure had collapsed and he'd been able to escape from the slowly falling wreckage through his ability to judge distances and rates of fall of the loose pieces. This was different, of course, but not much.

	Gregg tried desperately to choke off those words before it would be too late, but it was no good. He might as well give up the struggle, stop trying. But surprisingly, that decision when it came brought a feeling more of relief than of despair—as if it was what he'd been wanting to do all along. He listened to his own voice expanding on his idea, and even trying to sell the idea to the crew-men in the room!

	"You," said the man beside him when he'd finished talking, "are mad." But a rising inflexion on the last syllable made it more a question than a statement, and there was a growing brightness in the man's eyes.

	Mercer said dazedly: "It might work at that. But are you sure you can do it."

	"No," Gregg said, "but is there an alternative?" 

	There wasn't.

	Finally Allerton spoke: "We've no choice but to try it," he said, and he looked peculiarly at Gregg. "But do you know what this means, what you're letting yourself in for?"

	"Yes." Gregg knew exactly what he was letting himself in for, stupid fool that he was.

	The Second Pilot hesitated. For a moment it looked as if he might «ay something uncharacteristic—something warm and human that he would probably be ashamed of later. But the hesitation passed :

	"In that case there's no time to waste. Peterson, Williamson, Mercer: Get suited up! And somebody dig me out a plan of the ship, quick! We've less than three hours ..."

-

	There had been disagreement at first whether Gregg or one of the crew should do the job, but that had been settled when Allerton pointed out that any chance they had depended on the crew being at their stations. Then the matter of telling or not telling the passengers came up again. It was decided that they be kept in the dark; it would be kinder that way if the worst should happen. The decisions had been made while Peterson and another man removed a section of hull plating near the stern to make an observation niche, and Mercer ran a communications line from it direct to the control room. Not a second was wasted.

	Finally, after the radio-medic had given him an emetic and cautioned him to drink as sparingly as possible, Gregg had been—installed. Three minutes later the ship began decelleration.

	The second time wasn't nearly as bad as his memory of the first time had lead him to expect—nothing could be as horrible as that, Gregg realised now, because his fear-neurosis had blown that memory up out of all proportion. It was bad enough, though. He had to take two-and-a-half G's for nearly sixty hours, in an upright, standing position. He was sore and stiff and he could feel his blood being forced through each swollen, distended vein in his legs. He wondered if his two-and-a-half times normal weight would cause them to rupture. The thought of bleeding to death from burst varicose veins wasn't pleasant; he tried to forget his legs. Occasionally he managed to sleep, or maybe it was that he simply blacked out. Time was stretched out to its ultimate elastic limit, but it did pass eventually.

	When the ship was less than a planetary diameter out from Earth the A-drive shut down. Gregg ordered several short bursts from the chemical motors to convert their direct approach course into a grazing ellipse, then the gyros nosed the ship over for entry into the atmosphere.

	Allerton stammered something then about him being a hero; it made Gregg feel horribly embarrassed. He was, after all, trying to save his own life as well as everyone else's. Peterson, in a bellow that nearly overloaded Gregg's phones, yelled, "Ride 'im, cowboy!" and they slid into air.

	Frictional heating began at once. The leading edges of their wings glowed red, then orange, then almost white hot—the vertical stabilisers, too. He could imagine what their anything-but-streamlined hull looked like all too well, though it was outside his angle of vision. The heating would be bad, he knew, because the ship was about as streamlined as a screw-nail. He hoped his suit would stand it.

	He said: "Altitude about seventy miles. Speed Mach Five or Six. Heading West Nor'west. New Zealand 'way over on the right."

	The ship dipped lower. The air screaming past became a solid thing that threatened to shake the ship apart. It tore at buckled and weakened plates, peeled them back, and ripped them off. It reached iron-clad fingers of supersonic turbulence into Gregg's observation niche and tried to pluck him out. It tried very hard. But Gregg was lashed—tightly—with chains and steel cable to one of the main longerons that ran the length of the ship. He stayed put.

-

	His idea had been simply that he, Gregg, should become the ship's eyes, and he had managed to convince Allerton and the others that there was a good chance of landing the ship by 'talking it' down. He now lay parallel with the long axis of the ship, just above the stern stabilisers. In the Wallaby's present position he had a good view straight down towards the planetary surface, and a reasonably good one sternwards for the coming tail-down landing. If the ship got anywhere near the surface in one piece, that was. In a landing of this type the Wallaby operated as a supersonic glider, everything depended on it retaining its aerodynamic stability. But if the collision had warped just one of the flying surfaces out of true, they would be flung into a spin that would pull them apart in seconds—with fatal results, naturally, to all concerned.

	Abruptly a more immediate problem forced that thought out of his mind. The plates around his observation niche were glowing red. So were the chains binding him. His suit was getting hotter, and hotter ...

	"The heat will expand—and probably loosen—the chains slightly, but they should hold all right." Allerton's voice was harsh with strain, but he tried to sound reassuring. "It's mostly your imagination about the suit. It will heat up—but it's well insulated and will be livable . ." the pilot's voice wavered, then went on: "... for as long as will be necessary to land the ship. You must have known that, Mr. Gregg."

	Gregg grunted. The shoulder piece of his suit—the only part of it that he could see—was turning red. That wasn't imagination. Then it hit him. "You must have known that, Mr. Gregg!" Known what?

	Suddenly, Gregg knew what.	

-

	They were crossing the sunrise line. The Indian Ocean below them was a deep blue-green shading almost into purple, and stippled with the bright orange spots of high-flying alto-cumulus. Madagascar was a dun-coloured shadow on the horizon, still lost in the haze of dawn. It was very, very beautiful. Gregg barely noticed it.

	So that was the reason for Allerton's peculiar look when Gregg had first told him about this idea, and the Second Pilot's asking him whether he knew exactly what he was doing. It explained why the crew started calling him 'Mr.' as if they really meant it, and their awkwardness towards the end. He'd only thought he had known what he was doing. He was a stupid, blind fool. And because of that utter stupidity, he was really going to be a hero.

	The posthumus award sort.

	If, or when the ship landed, Gregg now knew, his insulated suit would then be nearly as hot inside as it was outside now, and because that insulation was an extremely bad conductor of heat, it would retain that heat long after landing. He would be roasted in his own personal oven long before the crew—opening the airlock, lowering themselves on ropes, and cutting him free—could get him out. But on the other hand, if the shock of landing snapped his heat-weakened fastenings and threw him to the ground, the same thing would happen. If the impact with hard-baked earth didn't kill him outright, then the rocket's exhaust would fry him to a crisp. Gregg cursed himself silently. He should have kept his big mouth shut and his ideas to himself. He would at least have died comfortably that way; death from radiation poisoning was an easy way to go, he had heard. 

	Relatively, of course.

	A voice crackled suddenly from his phones, startling him.

	"We're banking right, I tell you! I feel it. Straighten up! Straighten up, quick!"

	"Flying straight and level," Gregg contradicted. He added viciously : "I can see. You can't."

	Allerton's voice sounded, sharply rebuking the offender; then, "Sorry about that, Mr. Gregg."

	Gregg understood. The strain of flying a ship with nothing but a voice that said the ship was flying level, and going so fast, and with an altitude of such and such, must be killing to men used to the accurate readings of a panel full of instruments. Gregg felt sorry for them.

	But he felt sorrier for himself.

-

	Central Africa slid beneath them, then the outline of the West Coast. They were north of the equator now, almost paralleling it. The Atlantic, cloud-covered, was a sea of dirty grey cotton wool; there was no moon. South America passed below, then their glide took them south again into the Pacific.

	After one of his periodic height and velocity reports, Gregg said: "We'll have to land next time round—my suit's getting too hot." There must have been something in his voice, Allerton didn't even try to argue.

	"Right. Can we make Woomera? Or anywhere in Australia? The passengers—"

	"No. Changing direction at this speed would pull our wings off. We want a big flat uninhabited spot. The Sahara looks the best bet, it's right in our line of flight and it should be light enough to—"

	An involuntary cry of pain cut the sentence off as a scalding jet of steam erupted into his face. The unused water in his suit's canteen, vaporized by the increasing heat, had blown out the valve of his drinking tube. Eyelids pressed tightly shut and choking on a lung-searing mixture of steam and air, Gregg wondered if he was blind. Then he thought, what difference did blindness make to him now? He opened his eyes.

	Allerton's voice was a panicky squeaking in his phones, wanting to know what had happened and calling for height and velocity reports. Gregg coughed a couple of times and was surprised when he found that he could talk.

	"But can you see?" Allerton asked, his voice harsh with urgency. "Can you see at all?"

	"Yes," Gregg lied. He could see all right, but only as far as the face-plate of his helmet. The visor was completely fogged, and the drying chemicals in his helmet—-which were meant only to neutralise the water content of his breath—might not be able to handle it.

	The Earth below was a grey, featureless shadow that showed neither shape nor distance.

	Continuous transonic buffeting threatened to shake the ship to pieces, and Gregg didn't know whether they were heading north, south, or straight down. He sensed changes in direction several times but didn't report them; he had to trust the inherent stability of the ship until he could see again. Gradually the sting went out of his scalded face and for a man who was going to die he didn't feel too badly.

	The grey mist on his visor became the grey of clouds whipping past close below him—very close below him. Through gaps he saw ground that wasn't particularly flat, but ahead there seemed to be few if any gaps to see through at all. They'd have to land. Now.

	"Height about three miles. Velocity Mach One point Five. Start pulling her up!"

	Slowly, heavily, the great ship pointed her nose up in a climb. The climb steepened, became vertical. Speed fell away to nothing as the ship stalled. It began to drop tail first—still held vertical by straining gyros—towards the cloud blanket below.

	One gap in the clouds showed a flat, greyish-blue something that could be anything, another the dull brown of sand, and yet another showed a section of jagged and rock-strewn mountain-side. But there were a few houses clinging to that mountain-side; they helped him judge his height and rate of fall with more accuracy than was possible with clouds.

	"Thirty-five thousand feet. Fire motors!"

	Gregg kept calling altitude figures as the now pink-tinged clouds rushed up at them. But they were falling too fast.

	"Increase to six G's for five seconds, then back to three!" Decelleration jammed him down into his suit, almost bringing his eyes too low for his visor. There really couldn't have been anything wrong with his insides after all, or this sort of treatment would have killed him long ago. But that was small comfort now. One gap in the clouds showed flat, sandy ground, the other a mountain-side that was even more forbidding at close range. The clouds directly below them, he hoped, concealed sand.

	At this latitude—if his guess on that was good—cumulus during early morning floated at a height of, let's see ... Gregg cursed. A low cloud base, practically hugging the ground. No time for corrections after passing through it. Gregg rapidly recited figures. Allerton, because he could do nothing else, treated them as being accurate and worked the ship from them.

	In the instant before the clouds engulfed them, a blur of white that exploded into red on the edge of a stabiliser caught the tail of his eye, and for one wild second he felt almost hopeful. Then they hit and a mighty blow tore him free of the chains and flung him into a seething white cauldron that went down for ever. Frantically he kicked out with his feet and forced his cracking arm muscles to aid them in impelling him away from the twisted wreckage of his observation post. About twenty feet away from the Wallaby's hull the water was actually cool. Gregg turned over and relaxed, floating slowly upward in the cool, green ocean. He still felt like a half-boiled lobster, but he hadn't any doubt at all that he was going to live. He looked around.

	The ship was at rest on the sandy bottom of what looked like a shallow bay somewhere in Morocco. All but thirty feet of her was submerged and the outraged denizens of the sea were fleeing from the bubbles made as the high hull temperature transferred itself to the surrounding water. The cargo hatch, which was below water level, opened and two figures clad in space suits stared downwards. At the sight of Gregg floating slowly towards the surface one raised an arm in greeting—or perhaps in silent farewell, thinking him dead. But he had no intention of dying now. He raised one arm in acknowledgment.

	As he broke surface and floated on his back, the tiny waves washing over his cooling suit and rocking him gently in their embrace, he saw a naval cutter flying the tricolour of France come forging round the rocky, cloud-wrapped headland he had mistaken for a mountain. There must be a seaport nearby, he thought. That would be handy; the day after to-morrow he had to see a man about a job, on Titan.

The End