“We didn’t have to come,” Shep encouraged him. “Frankly, I’d have gone anywhere just to get away from the station. I’ve been miserable ever since we flunked out. Just a few trick questions and—WHAM—there were three years gone to waste!” “Maybe they won’t be wasted if our reward is the finding of the _Northern Cross_,” Rock pointed out. He found that he could work better by taking his feet off the hull and “hanging” face down over it, with Shep holding on to his safety line to prevent the blast of the torch from driving him outward. Johnny was busy holding the flux in position. Suddenly the force of the blast caused Rock’s worn safety line to snap and sent him hurtling outward from the hull of the _Dog Star_! Rock heard his own name blasting into his ears as the anguished voice of Shep called to him. Then he saw his friend leap upward with clutching futile hands. Shep’s body jerked to the end of his own line, and then the reaction sent him slamming back onto the hull. As Rock, still numb with shock, sped farther outward, he heard the frantic calls of Shep and Johnny trail off as their radio power faded. Finally no sound reached his ears, and the oppressive silence of lonely space closed in on him. It had all happened with such suddenness that he could scarcely realize it had happened at all. Hopelessness had already begun to get a hold on him before he began to think of how he might save himself. Perhaps it was something he had learned in cadet training that made him calm himself and think reasonably. His stiff fingers still clutched the cutting torch that had rocketed him from the _Dog Star_. Why not use it the same way to get back? Although still streaking out laterally from the ship, he was under influence of the ship’s motion and was traveling just as fast beside it. Rock carefully judged his direction and blasted with the tool in the opposite direction. He felt the deceleration of his outbound speed as the firestream braked him. Presently the rocket reaction stopped him and he began going back toward the ship. Rock used the cutting torch for a brake to slow his return onto the skin of the hull. Shep and Johnny clattered over to him and pulled him in to safety. Rock could see relief spreading over their faces. “Thank goodness you’re safe, Rock!” Shep said. “You nearly gave us heart failure! You sure kept your head!” If he hadn’t, Rock told himself grimly, he would not be here this minute. A spaceman had to keep his head at all times. His cadet training had impressed that on him. The days and weeks that followed passed uneventfully, if not exactly excitingly. There was so little to do, such a monotony of scene. A few thousand miles from the Venus orbit, Rock fed directions for a gyroscope turn into the automatic pilot, and the rockets began spouting bursts of flame to check the _Dog Star_’s headlong rush. All aboard were forced to take to shock couches for the first time to lessen the pain on their bodies.