the craft."

"Can't you replace that jacket and limp through?"

"Got a faulty gasket on the replacement. Can't be patched up."

"You're in a helluva fix, Conally. Even a Lunar ferry pilot's got enough sense to check his spare parts before blastoff."

"I check mine after each landing. There isn't much that can happen to it when the pile's cold.... Can you give me a tow, Altman?"

"Can't do that, Conally. I'm not...."

"If you'll just give me a boost then. To the crest of this hyperjump. Then I won't have to worry about slipping through."

"Like I started to tell you," Altman intoned insistently, "one of my grapples is sheared."

"You still have two more."

"Uh-uh. This wise boy ain't gonna take a chance of a line snapping and knocking a hunk outta my hull. Especially when you got cargo spilling all over space."

Brad clenched his fists. He spoke through his teeth. "Look, Altman. Regulations say...."

"... I gotta help you," the other cut him short. "I know that, pal. That's why I happen to be stopping off at this not too enticing spot. And I'm offering help.... Come aboard any time you want."

"And hang up a free salvage sign on the Fleury?"

Altman didn't answer.

Twisting the gooseneck in his hand, Brad sucked in a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. But he didn't say what had leaped into his mind. Instead he glanced over at the panel's screen.

Altman's ship showed up there—a large, greenish-yellow blip. There were other small dots on the scope too. As he looked, the large blip coasted over to one of the dots. The two became one mark on the screen.

"You're picking up my cargo!" Brad shouted.

"The stuff not in orbit around the Fleury ain't yours any longer, Conally," Altman laughed. "You oughta bone up on your salvage laws."

"You damned scavenger!"

"Now, now, Brad," the other said smoothly. "What would you do if you were in my position? Would you let top priority cargo slip through to normal and get lost off the hyperlane? Or would you scoop it up and bring it in for bonus price?"

"You're not after a bonus," Brad roared into the mike. "You're after a contract.... Altman, I'll pay two thousand for a ten-minute tow up-arc. That'll almost wipe out my profit on this haul."

"No sale."

Brad gripped the mike with both hands. "So you're just going to sit around and pick up cargo droppings!"

"The book says I gotta stick around until you come aboard, until you get underway on hyperpower, or until there just ain't any more ship or crew.... Might as well pick up cargo; there's nothing else to do."

"And when I come aboard you'll want to unload the Fleury too, I take it."

"Wouldn't you?"

Half the spilled crates were in close orbit around the SS Fleury. The tri-D scope showed that. Brad estimated distances of several of the objects as he clamped the helmet to the neckring of his suit and clattered to the pilot compartment airlock.

In the lock he unsnapped the hand propulsor from its bulkhead niche and clamped it to his wrist plate while the outer hatch swung open and the lock's air exploded into a void encrusted with a crisscross of vivid, vari-colored lines. The individual streaks, he estimated, averaged at least ten degrees in length. That indicated he was a reasonable period of time away from spillthrough into normal space where the lines would compress into the myriad normal pinpoints that were stars, undistorted by hyperspace perspective. When the streaks decreased to four or five degrees, he reminded himself, that was the time to start worrying about dropping out the bottom of the trough.

He waited until one of the square, tumbling objects rolled by, obscuring sections of the out-of-focus celestial sphere as it whirled in its orbit. Timing it, he waited for the box to complete another revolution. Just before it arrived the third time, he pushed off.

As he closed in on the crate, he knew his timing had been correct. He intercepted it directly above the hatch and clung clumsily to a hand ring as its greater mass swept him along in an altered orbit. A quick blast from his propulsor eliminated the rotation he had imparted to the object and he reoriented himself with respect to the ship. Spotting the ruptured sideplate where the cargo had burst through the hull, he steered his catch toward the hole with short bursts of power.

The bent plate made a natural ramp down which he slid the crate onto the gravity-fluxed deck. Inside, he degravitated the chamber, floated the box into position and double-lashed it to the deck.

Pushing away from the ship again, he checked the length of the stellar grid streaks. They were still approximately ten degrees long. It looked hopeful. He might have time to collect all the orbiting cargo before he got dangerously close to spillthrough. Then he'd see about pushing on up-arc until the fuzzy streaks stretched to forty or fifty degrees—perhaps even ninety, if he could allow himself the luxury of wishful thinking. There he'd be at quartercrest and would have time to rest before worrying about being drawn down the arc again toward normal space.

While he jockeyed the fourth crate into the hold, a huge shadow suddenly blotched out part of the star lines off to the port side. It was the Cluster Queen pursuing a crate not in orbit around the Fleury. Brad shrugged; he'd be unable to pick up the ones that far out anyway.

But his head jerked upright in the helmet suddenly. If Altman was after a free box, he realized, the Cluster Queen could not appear in sharp outline to an observer in the Fleury system! The Fleury, sliding down the hyperspatial arc with its orbiting crates, would be moving slowly toward normal space in response to the interdimensional pull exerted by its warp flux rectifier, hidden inaccessibly in the bowels of the pile, as it was on most outdated ships. But the free boxes, in another time-space system with the Cluster Queen, would be stationary on the arc and would appear increasingly fuzzy as the planal displacement between the two systems became greater.

The truth, Brad realized, was that the Cluster Queen was drawing closer both spatially and on the descending node of the hyperspatial arc! Altman was violating the law; he was going to take the cargo in orbit. And he could well get away with it too, since it would be the word of only one man aboard the Fleury against the word of the entire crew of the Queen.

There were still six boxes in orbit. He pushed out again toward the closest and saw he had not been wrong in his reasoning. The Queen's outline was razor-edge sharp; it was close enough to stretch across fifty-five degrees of the celestial sphere.

He kept it in the corner of his vision as he hooked on to the crate and started back to the ship. The Queen was reversing attitude slowly. When he had first spotted it, it was approaching at an angle, nose forward. But now it had gyroed broadside and was continuing to turn as it drifted slowly toward Brad and the box.

"Altman!" he cried into his all-wave helmet mike. "You're on collision course!"

Brad kicked away from the crate and streaked back toward the Fleury.

There was a laugh in the receiver. "Did you hear something, Bronson?"

"No, captain," another voice laughed. "For a moment I thought maybe I picked up a small blip near that crate. But I don't guess Conally would be stupid enough to suit up and try to hustle his own cargo."

Brad activated his propulsor again and gained impetus in his dash for the Fleury's hatch.

"Still," Altman muttered, "it seems like I heard somebody say something about a collision course."

The Cluster Queen was no longer turning. It had stabilized, with its tubes pointed in the general direction of the Fleury and her floating crates.

Perspiration