 Why did Maggie decide to save Ben?
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] With never a moment to rest, the pursuit through space felt like a game of hounds and hares ... or was it follow the leader? Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him. They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed tombstones. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. It had begun a week ago in Luna City. At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents' death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books. At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space. And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the Odyssey —the first ship, it was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond. A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone above him through Luna City's transparent dome. You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. Or— There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who operated from the Solar System's frontiers. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth. After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last flight before retirement. Ben Curtis made it to Venus. So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
 She knew her husband needed an astrogator.
 She felt sorry for him, knowing he hadn't meant to kill Cobb.  She knew her husband needed an astrogator.  She was also on the run and needed a companion.  She was pressured by the others.