I thought for a bit and remembered I could talk to Jeff over my suit radio. I decided to try it, not without misgivings. I tongued it on and said, “Jeff. Oh, Jeff. I’m out here. You forgot me.” I was going to say some more, but just then he broke in, angry and so loud it made my helmet ring, with, “Joseph! Did you hear anything then?” A pause, then, “Well, clean the wax out of your ears, stupid, because I did! I think we got an enemy out there!” Another and longer pause, while my blood curdled a bit thicker, then, “Well, okay, Joseph, I’ll go along with you this time. But if I hear the enemy once more, I’m going to suit up and take a rifle and sit in the airlock door until I’ve potted him.” I tongued the radio off quick, fearful I’d sneeze or something. I had only one faint consolation: Joseph seemed to be a bit on my side, or maybe he was just lazy. I thought some more, a mite frantic-like now, and after a while I said to myself, _Been going five minutes now, so I’m doing about a quarter of a mile a second—that’s fifteen miles a minute, wow!—but out here velocities are purely relative. My suit does a little better than a quarter G full on. Okay. I’ll jet to the ship._ No sooner said than acted on—I was beginning to rely too much on impulse now. The suit jet killed my false weight at once and I was off, mighty careful to aim myself along my line or a little outside it, so as not to wander over into the beam. Pretty soon the tail and Trompled Love were getting noticeably bigger. Then a lot bigger. Then my suit fuel ran out. * * * * * I’d built up enough velocity so that I was still gaining on the ship for a few seconds. In fact, I almost made it. My gauntlet was about to close on Trompled Love when the ship started slowly to pull away. Oh, it was frustrating! I remembered then what I should have a lot earlier, and grabbed for the ship-end of my line so as not to lose the distance I’d gained—and in my haste I knocked it away from me. The only good thing was that I didn’t knock it out of the notch. Now I was losing space to the ship faster and faster. Yet all I could do was reel in the me-end of the line as fast as I could. Suddenly the whole line straightened and gave me a bigger jerk than I’d intended. I could see Trompled Love crumple a little. And I was swinging just a bit, like a pendulum. I used a glove-friction to spread the rest of the jerk, but still I was at the end of my line and Trompled Love had crumpled a bit more before I was coasting along with the ship again. My side of Trompled Love was bent back maybe twenty degrees. The eye of the beam shone at me from the tail like a pale blue moon. For quite a while it brightened and dimmed as I tick-tock swung.