Poking out of her tail, ghostlier than the flame over a cafe royale, was the evil blue glow of her jet. In an instant I’d guessed exactly what had happened and was beating myself on the head for not having anticipated it. Joseph had swum into the cabin right after Jeff. And Jeff had yelled at him. “It’s about time, you lazy lunkhead! Everything secure? Okay, I’m switching on the beam!” And I’d probably brought the whole thing about by telling him that damfool sled story—and then sticking to him so close he just had to get rid of me, so as to be with Joseph. Meanwhile the ship was gathering speed in her sneaky way and the wavy safety line between me and the airlock was starting to straighten. As you know, an ionic jet’s only good space-to-space. It’s not for heavy-G work; ours could deliver only one-half G at max and was doing less than one-quarter now. Which meant the ship was starting off slower than most ground cars. But the beam would fire for hours, building up to a terminal velocity of fifteen miles a second and carrying the ship far, far away from lonely Joe Hansen. Except that we were tied together, of course. I was very grateful then for the weeks I’d practiced space-roping, though I’d never won any prizes with it, because without thinking I started to whip my line very carefully. And on the third try, just as it was getting pretty straight, I managed to settle it in a notch in one outside end of Trompled Love. After that I took up strain on the line as gradually as I could, letting it friction through my gloves for as long as I could before putting all my mass on it—because although one-quarter G isn’t much, it piles up in a few seconds to quite a jerk. I spread that jerk into several little ones. Well, the last jerk came and the line didn’t part and Trompled Love didn’t crumple much, though the Shaula-light showed me several very nasty-looking wrinkles in it. And there I was trailing along after the ship, though out to one side, and feeling about as much strain on the line as if I were hanging from a cliff on the moon, and knowing I was going about five feet a second faster every second. * * * * * My idea wanting to be out to the side (and bless my impulses for realizing it was the one important thing!) was to keep my line and myself out of the beam. An ionic jet doesn’t look hot from the side. But from straight on it’s a lot brighter than an arc light—it’s almost as tight as a laser beam—and I didn’t want to think about what it would do to me, even trailing as I was a hundred yards aft. Though of course long before it had ruined me, it would have disintegrated my line. My being out to the side was putting the ship off balance on its jet and presumably throwing its course toward base and Shaula-near little by little into error. But that was the least of my worries, believe me.