Back by the gravity panel, Pete tried desperately to stop me. His bony hands went out, plucked at my wrists. I couldn't hear him babbling outside the helmet. But I could see his shining eyes and moving lips. His eyes were tortured, pleading.
He might as well have been pleading with a man a hundred miles away—or a century dead!
I was deaf to reason. I was feeling merely a blind instinct to help a woman who had taken on a man's job.
Pete's eyes followed me as I went clumping toward the control board, and I felt a sudden tug of pity for him. If I never came back, he'd miss me a lot. Good old Pete! To make him feel better I flashed him a smile and waved him back.
"Sit down and relax, old-timer!" I said. "I'm just going out for a little breath of fresh air!"
It was just as well he couldn't hear me. He was real touchy about space. You had to treat it with respect. The lads who sailed the seas of Terra before Pete started reaching for the stars with his little pink hands had what it takes, and their lingo is the spaceman's lingo still. But to Pete spacemen were a notch higher in every respect. Nothing riled him more than loose talk about reading the weather by the glass or taking a squint at the North Star. Or going out for a breather on deck!
I thought of all that as I went out. Oh, Pete was a special character if ever there was one.
CHAPTER III
The Mirage Pup