The outer portal opened on the sandy waste, brightly lit, chilling. The vast crescent of Jupiter lay on the horizon ahead, reflecting brilliant light across the glistening sand. The sun, like a giant star, lay close near the horizon, forty five degrees from the half illumined bulk of Jupiter. The huge planet, however, radiated warmth, while the sun seemed cool and distant and somehow removed. Gartland stepped onto the sand, his feet making the weird and wispy crunches characteristic of Titan, and Brace touched a button and re-entered his ship. "Did you throw the scum out?" Barrows asked. Brace looked up. The tall mate was standing impassively beside the port. Brace grunted. "I suppose he wanted to buy 'er," Barrows said, "but from what I've heard, it's taking more than a chance to deal with him." Brace walked up the companionway toward the mess room. "Well, it's none of my business," Barrows growled, following him, "except that he talks. Any deal you make with him--" Brace scowled. "I didn't make any deal. One of his ships is supposed to meet us." Barrows snorted. "I say, chuck her out! It's a cleaner way to die, anyway." "Shut up!" Brace barked. He tucked the folded paper in his pocket and entered the mess room. Why should he care, he wondered. The Gorgon III was only a tramp. The men on it were space-rats. And the waste port had taken many a body and expelled it with an explosive poof of air into the velvet tranquility of space. He'd watched unemotionally as a spotlight had followed many lifeless hulks of men, sometimes moving straight like an arrow, other times rotating or turning slowly, end over end. Some day, he might do it himself; begin that long, gradual fall toward the sun, or perhaps his body would answer to the cosmic law of the planets, his lifelessness immortalized in a great circle about the sun. * * * * * Brace looked at the food laid before him and stirred it with a fork. The weight of the food on his fork was slight and he pictured the lightness of the girl's fragile form. With only one hand, he could place her in that chute and close the door to the port. In his mind, he pulled the release lever, heard the dull thump of escaping air, saw her wheeling away, pinioned in the glare of light, spinning around and around like a ballet dancer, just as he had seen her spin around and around on the stage. She wouldn't resist. She would accept death. But she'd go spinning, pirouetting into the lordly sun, or perhaps the sun would be pleased by her dance and would bid her dance forever around it. Abruptly, Brace's big paw smashed his cup on the table and it shattered. The men looked at him curiously, watched him rise, the broken handle still in his clenched fingers, brown droplets of coffee sinking into his tunic. Then he turned and walked out of the mess room.