For another split second he hesitated. Abruptly he cut the rockets. A second later it was too late for him to change his mind, but he didn't consider that possibility. Under his guidance the _Hell Bat_ was already swinging on its gyros at full rotation speed. And his fingers were playing the keys of the calculators, getting the data for correcting course for a direct hit on the junkship. He set the vernier feed for rocket fuel, pressed the firing button. The exploding charge was barely felt. He checked the new flight projection. It would be a bulls eye against the hull of the freighter! A direct hit at two thousand miles per hour! In ten minutes or maybe closer to five it would be over, and he would be hurtling through space. He leaped toward the airlock, his fingers automatically checking his helmet, the zippers of his space-suit. Already the panic of his almost certain doom in outer space was making him sweat, making his voice shrill as he said distractedly, "It could go wrong it could go wrong it could go wrong." He was in the airlock, thinking what its smooth walls could do to him if the outer door stuck so he couldn't get out. The air took an eternity to pump into the tanks so the outer hatch could open. It opened. He drew himself into a tight ball against the inner wall of the airlock. He straightened his legs, feeling momentum build up within him, sensing the ship fall away under him. He was alone. Not far away was the sleek silver hull of the _Hell Bat_ with its badly damaged nose. It was moving away from him too slowly, he thought. And so far away he could hardly see them without the telescopic magnification of the ship's viewscreen, were the planetoid with the freighter nestled against it, and his SP47 with Stella aboard. But they were growing larger appreciably as he and the _Hell Bat_ rushed toward them. * * * * * There was a chance--a remote chance that Stella would get over the shock of seeing her freighter and her _Hell Bat_ destroyed quick enough to put two and two together and get a fix on him before he was out of sight. She would have to come after him. Anything else was unthinkable. She wouldn't just _let_ him go to his death. Even though he had in one act destroyed everything she owned and left her penniless. The asteroid loomed large below him now. The freighter on it loomed even larger, it seemed, with its bright blue letters _SURPLUS JUNK CO._ They were only miles away, and between them and him was the _Hell Bat_. When it struck the freighter he would be less than five miles above it, but moving at a speed of two thousand miles an hour so he would out-distance any flying debris. In the other direction, out from the asteroid, was the gray SP47 with Stella. But she was already blasting the SP47's rockets! That meant she had seen what was to happen, realized she couldn't stop it from happening, and was getting up speed to rescue him as soon as possible!