Frank stepped from behind the barrier to stare at the new arrival. She was a globe, probably twenty times the size of his one-man ship. She was painted a dead black on one hemisphere and a blazing white on the other so her interior temperature could be regulated by rotating the reflecting and absorbent surfaces toward the sun while in flight. She evidently had had a brush with a meteor, since one section of her hull was badly scratched and dented.
The packet's port spun open. An eight-foot Martian in captain's uniform came tumbling out of it.
"K. M! K. M! K. M!" the Martian was chanting in a magnificent baritone. His great chest pumping like a bellows and his downy red face covered with perspiration, he sprinted for the Communications Room.
"Flash for all stations," he was singing as Frank and Tom hurried up to eavesdrop. "Captain Avron of Packet Spaceblazer reporting. When I came out from under Suspenso two hours ago an unknown comb-shaped vessel was pacing the Spaceblazer."
"Another ship in your orbit? And pacing a packet?" The K. M. man shook his head. "That's impossible, Captain."
"Impossible! Impossible!" The Martian hit a High C and fluttered the stumps of his atrophied wings. "The ship was there! When I signalled her, she accelerated and disappeared in fifteen minutes."
"Excuse me, captain," frowned the K. M. officer. "It must have been a meteor. You have the fastest ship in the system, so...."
Frank couldn't hear any more for the man in the lead-covered suit began bawling through a loudspeaker: "Space Patrol Two-Six ready for blast-off in ten minutes. Captain Sage on board, please."
"What do you make of that?" Frank asked, as he and Tom trotted toward the patrol ship.
"Hallucination, probably. Suspenso does strange things to a person sometimes."