The horizon was a crazy distorted thing no more than three hundred feet away, where the planetoid's surface bent away almost at right angles, and right on the crest against the blackness of the sky rested our Karden. It looked pretty good on a place which Gramps told me Clair had called ghastly when they first stepped outside to explore, but the dome looked even better. We stood within the lock now, and with a little squeal of delight which I picked up over our suit intercoms, Clair ran for one of the dull metal structures. "Look in here," she called back over her shoulder, and I entered through the doorway just in time to see her unscrewing her helmet. I yelled something loud over the intercom, I don't remember what, and then I flicked off the grav-plate button in the glove of my left hand and dove at Clair. I caught her just above the mid-section and we went down in a heap. I switched on my grav-plates again. "Just to show me how strong you are," she pouted, "you don't have to come flying through the air and landing on my belly. Lucky you weigh less than a pound without the grav-plates. Only quit trying to be funny." "Who's trying to be funny? There's only two things wrong with taking your helmet off now. First, we haven't warmed this place, and you'd have frozen your pretty little head off in half a minute. Second, there's less air here than in a vacuum tube, and even after we turn on the air generators I want to examine the dome for possible leaks before you go around taking off your helmet. See?" "Y-yes." She suddenly looked frightened. "It's just that the place looks so warm and homey, Jerry." It did. We were standing in a foyer and I could see a couple of bedrooms off on the left, comfortable, all metal and metal fibre construction. Further down the hall there was a pantry and when Clair opened the door we found it to be full of canned goods, all glued to the shelf lightly against the tricks which could be played by the negligible gravity. Beyond that, we found a first-class, compact kitchen unit, and you should have seen Clair's eyes light up. If there's anything that makes a girl sparkle all over, it's the first sight of a good kitchen over which she's to have domain. You can be anywhere--New York or here on 4270 or out on Pluto, it wouldn't matter. She hardly heard a word I said for the next ten minutes, as I patiently lined up the things we must do first. Three things, primarily. We had to start the heating units within the dome, do the same for the air generators, and check the dome itself for any leakage. * * * * * Gramps took care of items one and two, and I felt an urge to take off my helmet without checking further. But that was silly. We had played the game right thus far, and it would be pointless to get into serious trouble over a thing like that.