"Wait," Sheila said, and stood on tiptoes to take his face in her hands and kiss him on the lips. "You--you're different," Sheila said. "You're the same guy, a lot of fun, but you're a--man, too. This is for what might have been, Larry," she said, and kissed him again. "This is because I love you." Before he dropped the helmet in place, Larry said. "It isn't for what might have been, Sheila. It's for what will be." The helmet snapped shut over the shoulder ridges of the spacesuit. Moments later, he had slipped into the airlock. * * * * * "I say you're a fool, Ackerman Boone!" one of the enlisted men rasped at the leader of the mutiny. "I say now we've lost our last chance. Now it's too late to get into the lifeboats even if we wanted to. Now all we can do is--die!" There were still ten conscious men in the subspace room. The others had fallen before heat prostration and lay strewn about the floor, wringing wet and oddly flaccid as if all the moisture had been wrung from their bodies except for the sweat which covered their skins. "All right," Ackerman Boone admitted. "All right, so none of us knows how to work the subspace mechanism. You think that would have helped? It would have killed us all, I tell you." "It was a chance, Boone. Our last chance and you--" "Just shut up!" Boone snarled. "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking we ought to let them officers and Secret Servicemen to ram home the subspace drive. But use your head, man. Probably they'll kill us all, but if they don't--" "Then you admit there's a chance!" "Yeah. All right, a chance. But if they don't kill us all, if they save us by ramming home the subspacer, what happens? We're all taken in on a mutiny charge. It's a capital offense, you fool!" "Well, it's better than sure death," the man said, and moved toward the door. "Allister, wait!" Boone cried. "Wait, I'm warning you. Any man who tries to open that door--" Outside, a steady booming of blaster fire could be heard, but the assault-proof door stood fast. "--is going to get himself killed!" Boone finished. Grimly, Allister reached the door and got his already blistered fingers on the lock mechanism. Ackerman Boone shot him in the back with an N-gun. * * * * * Larry's whole body felt like one raw mass of broken blisters as, flat on his belly, he inched his way along the outside hull of the _Glory of the Galaxy_. He had no idea what the heat was out here, but it radiated off the hot hull of the _Glory_ in scalding, suffocating waves which swept right through the insulining of the spacesuit. If he didn't find the proper hatch, and in a matter of seconds.... * * * * * "Anyone else?" Ackerman Boone screamed. "Anyone else like Allister?"