There were twelve seats but only five engers. Further down was a tubercular-looking Martian and near the pilot room sat a fat man with a woman. The fat man chewed sleepily on a dead cigar and the woman stared out of the window. They were handcuffed together. Slowly a faint siren hum penetrated the cabin, not unlike the sound of a power plant. A power plant it was too, the ship digging in full blast as it skirted the pull of Neptune.

Ricker turned away from his garrulous neighbor, saw the sea-tinted planet had doubled in size. It was a perfect sphere, without a mark on its surface, a ring of solid hydrogen and helium. A worthless world, thought Ricker; worthless as was half the universe—because the woman in the seat up front had killed a man!

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