O'Dea eyed the dials, hands shaking on the control bars. There was no mistake! It was indeed their fuel, forced out of the hole in their tanks by internal pressure. Pressed out into space in a priceless ribbon, it had frozen into this amorphous mass! O'Dea's heart was heavy in his ears. His suddenly feverish eyes darted to the apparently-sleeping Morguma, then to the smiling portrait of Mercedes. Hawthorne nodded imperatively. The ship jolted slightly as the seizure beams went on. The fuel was clamped rigid before them. Morguma stirred and studied them with glazed eyes. His thick voice croaked: "Whazzhat? Oshygen? Lovely precious oshygen?" "That's right, Morguma. Oshygen--I mean oxygen." O'Dea brought the chunk closer, trying hard to look natural. "It looks so lovely I'd like to take a chunk on board and sniff it right now!" "Oh whassa lovely ideas!" Morguma, still clutching his whip and his bottle, navigated by dead-drunk reckoning to the vision plate in the control room's belly. He peered stupidly at the coiled fuel. O'Dea feared that the sound of his breathing would sober the Centaur. He held the breath in his pounding lungs. "'s funny oshygen!" Morguma mumbled. "Mosh funniesh oshygen I ever seen!" He brightened. "Mush be a rare ishotype! Oh mush be lov'liesh oshygen in whole galaxy!" He closed all but one eye and tried to read the dials. Furtively, O'Dea turned the telescope into the asteroid belt, and the instruments swayed as badly as Morguma himself. The Centaur shuddered and turned away. "Broken! All the metersh mush be drunk! Can't eshamine lovely oshygen!" He started sobbing. "Oh, come now, old man," said O'Dea, sympathetically. "We can bring a piece of it inside the ship and look at it first hand--" "Wunnerful ideas! Wunnerful!" Morguma slapped O'Dea's back affectionately. O'Dea picked himself off the floor and staggered in a great circle to the control board. A thin seizure beam stabbed at a corner of the fuel, broke off a generous chunk. Under O'Dea's trained fingers, it moved toward the ship, through the belly lock. Then it was in the cabin. IV Hawthorne had been doctoring the thermostats. In the heated room the highly volatile _quintol_-base fuel started swiftly to vaporize. O'Dea felt his head beginning to reel as the acrid fumes filled his lungs. His eyes burned. But the effect on the Centaur was greater. He became rigid and turned even more glassy-eyed. He swayed and for a tense second seemed about to fall over. Then his eyes focussed with a desperate effort, almost sobered by fear. "_Quintol!_" He raised the whip. "Not oshygen!" He lost his footing as Hawthorne banked the ship. Ordinarily this would have been no strain on his Centaur sense of balance. But the _quintol_ was too much for him. He crashed to the floor. When he picked himself up, he stood for a few seconds, stiff as rigor mortis, then he pitched down again on his face.