not?”

“I don't know. It's not that I'm afraid, but there's something in me that makes me back away from the prospect of fighting anyone.”

Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was peculiarly inappropriate, but not unbelievable, that the strongest and most agile man on Ganymede should be a coward. Well, she thought with a rush of sympathy, he couldn't help being what he was.

They had reached the more brightly lighted section of the city now. Trella could get a cab from here, but the Stellar Hotel wasn't far. They walked on.

Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and Quest had a late sandwich in the coffee shop.

“I landed here only a week ago,” he told her, his eyes frankly admiring her honey-colored hair and comely face. “I'm heading for Earth on the next spaceship.”

“We'll be traveling companions, then,” she said. “I'm going back on that ship, too.”

For some reason she decided against telling him that the assignment on which she had come to the Jupiter system was to gather his own father's notebooks and take them back to Earth.

Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly on Earth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company for the remaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She found herself enjoying the steadier companionship of Quest.

As a matter of fact, she found herself enjoying his companionship more than she intended to. She found herself falling in love with him.

Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her men tall and dark. She had determined that when she married it would be to a curly-haired six-footer.

She was not at all happy about being so strongly attracted to a man several inches shorter than she. She was particularly unhappy about feeling drawn to a man who was a coward.

The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity and take a hyperbolic path to Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make the trip. So Trella was delighted to find that the ship was the Cometfire and its skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired Jakdane Gille.

“Jakdane,” she said, flirting with him with her eyes as in days gone by, “I need a chaperon this trip, and you're ideal for the job.”

“I never thought of myself in quite that light, but maybe I'm getting old,” he answered, laughing. “What's your trouble, Trella?”

“I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard with me, and I'm not sure I ought to be,” she confessed. “I may need protection against myself till we get to Earth.”

“If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your man,” agreed Jakdane heartily. “I always had a mind to save you for myself. I'll guarantee you won't have a moment alone with him the whole trip.”

“You don't have to be that thorough about it,” she protested hastily. “I want to get a little enjoyment out of being in love. But if I feel myself weakening too much, I'll holler for help.”

The Cometfire swung around great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the inner planets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard the ship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute of it.

She told him only that she was a messenger, sent out to Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them back to Earth. She was tempted to tell him what the papers were. Her employer had impressed upon her that her mission was confidential, but surely Dom Blessing could not object to Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it.

All these things had happened before she was born, and she did not know what Dom Blessing's relation to Dr.