“Yes, and I’m going to call you ‘Babe,’ too, and mean it the same way they do. Besides, who wants a man a foot taller
than she is and twice as big? You’re just exactly the right size!”
“That’s spreading the good old oil, Bobby, but I’ll never tangle with you if I can help it. Buzz-saws are small, too,
and sticks of dynamite. Shall we go hunt up the parsonor should it be a priest? Or a rabbi?”
“Even that doesn’t make a particle of difference to YOU.”
“Of course not. How could it?”
“A parson, please.” Then, with a bright, quick grin: “We have got a lot to learn about each other, haven’t we?” “Some
details, of course, but nothing of any importance and we’ll have plenty of time to learn them.” “And we’ll love every
second of it. You’ll live down here in the Middle with me” won’t you” all the time you aren’t actually on duty?”
“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” and the two set out, arms around each other” to find a minister. And as they
strolled along:
“Of course you won’t actually need a job, ever, or my money, either. You never even thought of dowsing, did you?”
“Dowsing? Oh, that witch stuff. Of course not.” “Listen, darling. All the time I’ve been touching you I’ve been
learning about you. And you’ve been learning about me.”
“Yes” but=”
“No buts” buster. You have really tremendous powers, and they aren’t latent, either. All you have to do is quit
fighting them and use them. You’re ever so much stronger and fuller than I am. All I can do at dowsing is find water,
oil, coal, and gas. I’m no good at all on metals-I couldn’t feel gold if I were perched right on the roof of Fort Knox;
I couldn’t fee! radium if it were frying me to a crisp. But I’m positive that you can tune yourself to anything you
want to find.”
He didn’t believe it” and the argument went on until they reached the “Reverend’s” quarters. Then” of course” it was
dropped automatically; and the next five days were deliciously, deliriously” ecstatically happy days for them both.
II
At the time of this chronicle the status of interstellar flight was very similar to that of intercontinental jet-plane
flight in the nineteen-sixties. Starships were designed by humanity’s best brains; carried every safety device those
brains could devise. They were maintained and serviced by ultra-skilled, ultra-trained, ultra-able crews; they were
operated by the creme-de-la-creme of manhood. Only a man with an extremely capable mind in an extremely
capable body could become an officer of a subspacer.
Statistically” starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by man; so safe that Very Important ‘
Persons used them regularly” unthinkingly, and as a matter of course. Statistically, the starships’ fatality rate per
million passenger-light-years was a small fraction of that of the automobiles’ per million passenger-miles.
Insurance companies offered odds of tens of thousands to one that any given star-traveller would return unharmed
from any given star-trip he cared to make.
Nevertheless, accidents happened. A chillingly large number of lives had” as a total, been lost; and no catastrophe
had ever been even partially explained. No message of distress or call for help had ever been received. No single
survivor had ever been found; nor any piece of wreckage.
And on the Great Wheel of Fate the Procyon’s number came up.
In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously awake-feeling with his every muscle and with his
every square inch of skin; listening with all the force he could put into his auditory nerves; while deep down in his
mind a huge, terribly silent voice continued to yell “DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!”
In a very small fraction of a second Carlyle Deston moved-and fast. Seizing Barbara by an arm” he leaped out of
bed with her.
“We are abandoning ship-get into this suit–quick!” “But what … but I’ve got to dress!”
“No time! Snap it up!” He practically hurled her into her suit; clamped her helmet tight. Then he leaped into his
own. “Skipper!” he snapped into the suit’s microphone. “Deston. Emergency! Abandon ship!”
The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the sirens barely started to grow!” then quit. The
whole vast fabric of the ship trembled and shuddered and shook as though it were being mauled by a thousand
impossibly gigantic hammers. Deston did not know and never did find out whether it was his captain or an auto-
matic that touched off the alarm. Whichever it was, the disaster happened so fast that practically no warning at all
was given. And out in the corridor:
“Come on, girl-sprint!” He put his arm under hers and urged her along.
She did her best, but in comparison with his trained performance her best wasn’t good. “I’ve never been checked out
on sprinting in spacesuits!” she gasped. “Let go of me and go on ahead. I’ll follow-”
Everything went out. Lights, gravity” air-circulation everything.
“You haven’t been checked out on free fall, either. Hang onto this tool-hanger here on my belt and we’ll travel.”
“Where to?” she asked, hurtling through the air much faster than she had ever gone on foot.
“Baby Two-that is, Lifecraft Number Two-my crash assignment. Good thing I was down here in the Middle, I’d
never have made it from up Top. Next corridor left, I think.” Then, as the light of his headlamp showed numbers on
the wall: “Yes. Square left. I’ll swing you.”
He swung her and they shot to the end of the passage. He kicked a lever and the lifecraft’s port swung open-to
reveal a blaze of light and a startled, grey-haired man.
“What happened…. What hap … ?” The man began. “Wrecked. We’ve had it. We’re abandoning ship. Get into that
cubby over there, shut the door tight behind you, and stay there!”
“But can’t I do something to help-?”
“Without a suit and not knowing how to use one? You’d get burned to a cinder. Get in them-and jumpt” The oldster
jumped and Deston turned to his wife. “Stay here at the port, Bobby. Wrap one leg around that lever, to anchor you.
What does your telltale read? That gauge there-your radiation meter. It reads twenty, same as mine. Just pink, so
we’ve got a minute or so. I’ll roust out some passengers and toss ’em to you-you toss ’em along in there. Can do?’
She was white and trembling; she was very evidently on the verge of being violently sick; but she was far from
being out of control. “Can do, sir.”
“Good girl, sweetheart. Hang on one minute more and we’ll have gravity and you’ll be O.K.”
The first five doors he tried were locked; and, since they were made of armor plate, there was nothing be could do
about them except give each one a resounding kick with a heavy steel boot. The sixth was unlocked, but the
passengers-a man and a woman-were very evidently and very gruesomely dead.
So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a spacesuit was floundering help-
lessly in the air. He glanced at his telltale. Thirty-two. High in the red, almost against the pin.
“Bobby! What do you read?” “Twenty-six.”
“Good. I’ve found only one, but were running out of time. I’m coming in.”
In the lifecraft he closed the port and slammed on full drive away from the ship. Then, wheeling, he shucked
Barbara out of her suit like an ear of corn and shed his own. He picked up a fire-extinguisher-like affair and jerked
open the door of a room a little larger than a clothes closet. “Jump in here!” He slammed the door shut. “Now strip,
quick!” He picked the canister up and twisted four valves.
Before he could get the gun into working position she was out of her pajamas-the fact that she had been wondering
visibly what it was all about had done nothing whatever to cut down her speed. A flood of thick, creamy foam
almost hid her from sight and Deston began to talk-quietly.
“Thanks, sweetheart, for not slowing us down by arguing and wanting explanations. This stuff is DEKON-short for
‘Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Adsorbent, and Chelating, Type DCQ-429.’ Used soon enough, it takes care
of radiation. Rub it in good, all over you like this.” He set the foam gun down on the floor and went vigorously to
work. “Yes, hair, too. Every square millimeter of skin and mucous membrane. Yes, into your eyes. It stings ’em a
little, but that’s a lot better than’ going blind. And your mouth. Swallow six good big mouthfuls-it’s tasteless and
goes down easy.
“Now the soles of your feet-OK. The last will hurt plenty, but we’ve got to get some of it into your lungs and we
can’t do it the hospital way. So when I slap a gob of it over your mouth and nose inhale bard and deep. Just once is