"So far as I know, you are," the spaceman said. "You see, I'm—but I think I will have to make sure of you before I say more."
The space mine was round and dead black. Unreflecting. It drifted out a little as the long length of the junk freighter moved ahead, and blended into the blackness of space. The dead man, twisted around it at a grotesque angle, would have appeared to be someone almost doubled over backwards with mirth, if there had been any eyes to see him.
When the freighter had gone, pulling ahead at one G acceleration, the mine began to spin slowly, making the dead man seem to be searching for something—or seeing some far-off horror that caused his eyes to bulge out.
After a while there was a solid click from the interior of the space mine. A soft whine rose upward toward a supersonic pitch. Small holes appeared in the black surface of the globe, and small shapes crept out. Some of them were under the man, pushing at him. But the ropes held.
The mine didn't spin any more. The dead man seemed to have already forgotten the freighter, looking back the way it had come, waiting for what was to come next.
Imperceptibly it froze over with a microfilm of crystalline ice, so that new stars seemed to spring into being.
And that's the way Stella saw it. She hadn't taken Larry seriously about the space mine, and was only trying to catch her first glimpse of her freighter.
It didn't seem real. It was a face that looked somehow familiar, with two thick white spikes protruding from its nostrils like mockeries of tusks.
A thought flashed through her mind that Larry Jackson had figured out some dirty trick to scare her with. She didn't have much time to think before she knew that what she was seeing was real. Its position was such that it should have passed ten miles to the side.