Yet as he listened, he had another unpleasant thought. Now that he and Patch had the blot of “stowaway” against them, would this misconduct prevent them from realizing their dream of being future spacemen?

Finally, the ship’s motion stopped altogether. The Orion had nestled into her dock on the big Von Braun Space Station, named after the great space scientist of the past century.

“Now where do we go from here?” Patch asked, as the two removed their harness straps and got to their feet. “Garry, I’m scared, plenty scared! Wow, I’m a little wobbly too!”

“Let’s stay put until we hear further announcements over the speaker,” Garry suggested. “It’ll give us time to think this through a little longer.”

“We’re just stalling, that’s what we’re doing, aren’t we, Garry? We don’t want to turn ourselves in because we’re afraid of what will happen to us,” Patch said.

Garry hung his head. “I guess that’s what it does amount to, Patch. I keep thinking what this will do to our hopes of being spacemen. I’m afraid we’ll never make it now.”

They stayed in hiding for another half hour. Then Garry said: “We’ve got to have something to live on until we make up our minds what we’re going to do, Patch. I think space ships have emergency-ration compartments located along the corridors. I’m in favor of looking for one.”

“That’s better than just waiting here and doing nothing,” Patch agreed.

“I’ll look out and see if the coast is clear,” Garry said.

He looked around outside and then motioned to Patch. They started off quietly down the corridor, but after a moment they heard footsteps approaching from around th