"There—there!" shouted Captain Stefens into the mike aboard the jet boat circling around the station. "I think I see something bearing about seventy degrees to my left and up about twenty on the ecliptic! Do you see it, Scotty?"
Tom, in the bucket seat of the jet boat, strained his eyes but was unable to see over the control board.
Terry Scott, in a second jet boat ten miles away, answered quickly, "Yes, I think I see it, sir."
"Good!" shouted Stefens. "Maybe we've found something."
He spoke to Tom over his shoulder, keeping his eye on the floating objects in the black void of space. "Come to the starboard about one-quarter full turn, Corbett, and hold it. Then up, about twenty-five degrees."
"Aye, aye, sir," said Tom. He began to maneuver the small gnat-sized space craft to the proper position.
"That's good!" shouted Stefens. "Now hold that. Let me see. I think we've hit pay dirt."
From the right, Tom could see the red flash of the rockets of Terry Scott's jet boat, which Astro had volunteered to pilot, coming into view. As soon as order had been restored aboard the station, search parties had been sent out to look for survivors.
Carefully Tom slowed the space craft in response to Stefens' brief commands and soon came to a dead halt in space. There, hovering right above them, visible through the crystal dome of the jet boat, Tom could see two space-suited figures floating effortlessly. A moment later Scott's craft came alongside, and the two small ships were lashed together with magnetic lines. Tom and Stefens hurriedly pulled on their space helmets. They adjusted the valves regulating the oxygen supply in their suits, and Stefens slipped back the sliding top of the jet boat. Out on the hull he secured a line to a projecting ring, and ordering Tom to stand by, he pushed himself off the ship into the bottomless void of space.
The line trailing behind him, Stefens drifted toward the two helpless figures. He reached them in less than a minute, secured the line to their belts, and signaled Tom to haul in.