And at the end of it, he might really be a dead man.

* * * * *

Hours later, the last group of looters left the orbit-ship, and the airlock to the Ranger clanged shut. Tom heard the sucking sound of the air-tight seals, then silence. The orbit-ship was empty, its insides gutted, its engines no longer operable. The Ranger hung like a long splinter of silver alongside her hull, poised and ready to move on.

He knew that the time had come. Very soon the blastoff and the accelleration would begin. He had a few moments to find a position of safety, no more.

Quickly, he began scrambling toward the rear of the Ranger's hull, hugging the metal sides, moving sideways like a crab. Ahead, he knew, the viewscreen lenses would be active; if one of them picked him up, it would be quite a jolt to the men inside the ship ... but it would be the end of his free ride.

But the major peril was the blastoff. Once the engines cut off, the ship would be in free fall. Then he could cling easily to the hull, walk all over it if he chose to, with the aid of his boots and hand-pads. But unless he found a way to anchor himself firmly to the hull during blastoff, he could be flung off like a pebble.

He heard a whirring sound, and saw the magnetic mooring cables jerk. The ship was preparing for blastoff. Automatic motors were drawing the cables and grappling plates into the hull. Moving quickly, Tom reached the rear cable. Here was his anchor, something to hold him tight to the hull! With one hand he loosened the web belt of his suit, looped it over a corner of the grappling plate as it pulled in to the hull.

The plate pulled tight against the belt. Each plate fit into a shallow excavation in the hull, fitting so tightly that the plates were all but invisible when they were in place. Tom felt himself pulled in tightly as the plate gripped the belt against the metal, and the whirring of the motor stopped.

For an instant it looked like the answer. The belt was wedged tight ... he couldn't possibly pull loose without ripping the nylon webbing of the belt. But a moment later the motor started whirring again. The plate pushed out from the hull a few inches, then started back, again pulling in the belt....

A good idea that just wouldn't work. The automatic machinery on a spaceship was built to perfection; nothing could be permitted to half-work. Tom realized what was happening. Unless the plate fit perfectly in its place, the cable motor could not shut off, and presently an alarm signal would start flashing on the control panel.

He pulled the belt loose, reluctantly. He would have to count on his boots and his hand-pads alone.

He searched the rear hull, looking for some break in the polished metal that might serve as a toehold. To the rear the fins flared out, supported by heavy struts. He made his way back, crouching close to the hull, and straddled one of the struts. He jammed his magnetic boots down against the hull, and wrapped his arms around the strut with all his strength.

Clinging there, he waited.

It wasn't a good position. The metal of the strut was polished and slick, but it was better than trying to cling to the open hull. He tensed now, not daring to relax for fear that the blastoff accelleration would slam him when he was unprepared.

Deep in the ship, the engines began to rumble. He felt it rather than heard it, a low-pitched vibration that grew stronger and stronger. The Ranger would not need a great thrust to move away from the orbit-ship ... but if they were in a hurry, they might start out at nearly Mars-escape....

The jets flared, and something slammed him down against the fin strut. The Ranger moved out, its engines roaring, accellerating hard. Tom felt as though he had been hit by a ton of rock. The strut seemed to press in against his chest; he could not breathe. His hands were sliding, and he felt the pull on his boots. He tightened his grip desperately. This was it. He had to hang on, had to hang on....

He saw his boot on the hull surface, sliding slowly, creeping back and stretching his leg, suddenly it broke loose; he lurched to one side, and the other boot began sliding. There was a terrible ache in his arms, as though some malignant giant were tearing at him, trying to wrench him loose as he fought for his hold.

There was one black instant when he knew he could not hold on another second. He could see the blue flame of the jet streaming behind him, the cold blackness of space beyond that. It had been a fool's idea, he thought in despair, a million-to-one shot that he had taken, and lost....

And then the pressure stopped. His boots clanged down on the hull, and he almost lost his hand-grip. He stretched an arm, shook himself, took a great painful breath, and then clung to the strut, almost sobbing, hardly daring to move.

The ordeal was over. Somewhere, far ahead, an orbit-ship was waiting for the Ranger to return. He would have to be ready for the braking thrust and the side-maneuvering thrusts, but he would manage to hold on. Crouching against the fin, he would be invisible to viewers on the orbit-ship ... and who would be looking for a man clinging to the outside of a scout-ship?

Tom sighed, and waited. Jupiter Equilateral would have its prisoners, all right. He wished now that he had not discarded the stunner, but those extra pounds might have made the difference between life and death during the blastoff. And at least he was not completely unarmed. He still had Dad's revolver at his side.

He smiled to himself. The pirates would have their prisoners, indeed ... but they would have one factor to deal with that they had not counted on.

* * * * *

For Greg it was a bitter, lonely trip.

After ten hours they saw the huge Jupiter Equilateral orbit-ship looming up in the viewscreen like a minor planet. Skilfully Doc maneuvered the ship into the launching rack. The guards unstrapped the prisoners, and handed them pressure suits.

Moments later they were in a section in crews' quarters where they stripped off their suits. This orbit-ship was much larger than Roger Hunter's; the gravity was almost Mars-normal, and it was comforting just to stretch and relax their cramped muscles.

As long as they didn't think of what was ahead.

Finally Johnny grinned and slapped Greg's shoulder. "Cheer up," he said. "We'll be honored guests for a while, you can bet on that."

"For a while," Greg said bitterly.

Just then the hatchway opened. "Well, who do we have here?" a familiar voice said. "Returning a call, you might say. And maybe this time you'll be ready for a bit of bargaining."

They turned to see the heavy face and angry eyes of Merrill Tawney.



8. The Scavengers of Space

The casual observer might have been fooled. Tawney's guard was down only for an instant; then the expression of cold fury and determination on his face dropped away as though the shutter of a camera had clicked, and he was all smiles and affability. They were honored guests here, one would have thought, and this pudgy agent of the Jupiter Equilateral combine was their genial host, anxious for their welfare, eager to do anything he could for their comfort....

They were amazed by the luxuriousness of the ship. For the next few hours they received the best treatment, sumptuous accommodations, excellent food.

They were finishing their second cup of coffee when Tawney asked, "Feeling better, gentlemen?"

"You do things in a big way," Johnny said. "This is real coffee, made from grounds. Must have cost a fortune to ship it out here."

Tawney spread his hands. "We keep it for special occasions. Like when we have special visitors."

"Even when the visits aren't voluntary," Greg added sourly.

"We have to be realistic," Tawney said. "Would you have come if we invited you? Of course not. You gentlemen chose to come out to the Belt in spite of my warnings. You thus made things very awkward for us, upset certain of our plans." He looked at Greg. "We don't ordinarily allow people to upset our plans, but now we find that we're forced to include you in our plans, whether you happen to like the idea or not."

"You're doing a lot of talking," Greg said. "Why don't you come to the point?"

Tawney was no longer smiling. "We happen to know that your father struck a rich lode on one of his claims."

"That's interesting," Greg said. "Did Dad tell you that?"

"He didn't have to. A man can't keep a secret like that, not for very long. Ask your friend here, if you don't believe me. And we make it our business to know what's going on out here. We have to, in order to survive."

"Well, suppose you heard right. The law says that what a man finds on his own claim is his."

"Certainly," Tawney said. "Nobody would think of claim-jumping, these days. But when a man happens to die before he can bring in his bonanza, then it's a question of who gets there first, wouldn't you think?"

"Not when the man is murdered," Greg said hotly, "not by a long shot."

"But you can't prove that your father was murdered."

"If I could, I wouldn't be here."

"Then I think we'll stick to the law," Tawney said, "and call it an accident."

"And what about my brother? Was that an accident?"

"Ah, yes, your brother." Tawney's eyes hardened. "Quite a different matter, that. Sometimes Doc tends to be over-zealous in carrying out his assigned duties. I can assure you that he has been ... disciplined."

"That's not going to help Tom very much."

"Unfortunately not," Tawney said. "Your brother made a very foolish move, under the circumstances. But from a practical point of view, perhaps it's not entirely a tragedy."

"What do you mean by that?"

"From what I've heard," Tawney said, "you didn't have much use for your twin brother. And now you certainly won't have to share your father's legacy...."

It was too much. With a roar Greg swung at the little fat man. The blow caught Tawney full in the jaw, jerked his head back. Greg threw his shoulder into a hard left, slamming Tawney back against the wall. The guard charged across the room, dragging them apart as Tawney blubbered and tried to cover his face. Greg dug his elbow into the guard's stomach, twisted away and started for Tawney again. Then Johnny caught his arm and spun him around. "Stop it," he snapped. "Use your head, boy...."

Greg stopped, glaring at Tawney and gasping for breath. The company man picked himself up, rubbing his hand across his mouth. For a moment he trembled with rage. Then he gripped the table with one hand, forcibly regaining his control. He even managed a sickly smile. "Just like your father," he said, "too hot-headed for your own good. But we'll let it pass. I brought you here to make you an offer, a very generous offer, and I'll still make it. I'm a businessman, when I want something I want I bargain for it. If I have to share a profit to get it, I share the profit. All right ... you know where your father's strike is. We want it. We can't find it, so you've got us over a barrel. We're ready to bargain."

Greg started forward. "I wouldn't bargain with you for...."

"Shut up, Greg," Johnny said.

Greg stared at him. The big miner's voice had cracked like a whip; now he was drawing Merrill Tawney aside, speaking rapidly into his ear. Tawney listened, shot a venomous glance across at Greg, and finally nodded. "All right," he said, "but I can't wait forever...."

"You won't have to."

Tawney turned to the guard. "You have your orders," he said. "They're to have these quarters, and the freedom of the ship, except for the outer level. They're not to be harmed, and they're not to be out of your sight except when they're locked in here. Is that clear?"

The guard nodded. Tawney looked at Johnny, and started for the door, still rubbing his jaw. "We'll talk again later," he said, and then he was gone.

When the guard had left, and the lock buzzed in the door, Johnny looked at Greg and shook his head sadly. "You just about fixed things, boy, you really did. You've got to use your head if you want to stay alive a while, that's all. Look, there isn't going to be any bargaining with Tawney, he just doesn't work that way. It's heads he wins, tails we lose. Once he has what he wants we won't last six minutes. All right, then there's just one thing that can keep us alive ... stalling him. We've got to make him think you'll give in if he plays his cards right."

Greg was silent for a minute. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"And we've got to use the time we have to find some way to break for it." Johnny stood up, staring around the luxurious lounge. "If you want my opinion, it's going to take some pretty fancy footwork to get out of here with our skins."

* * * * *

True to his word, Tawney had given them the freedom of the ship. Greg and Johnny discovered that their guard was also an excellent guide. All day he had been leading them through the ship, chatting and answering their questions about asteroid mining, until they almost forgot that they were really prisoners here. And the guard's obvious pride in the scope and skill of his company's mining operations was strangely infectious.

Watching the Jupiter Equilateral ship in operation, Greg felt his heart sink. Here was a huge, powerful organization, with all the equipment and men and know-how they could ever need. How could one man, or two or three in a team, hope to compete with them? For the independent miner, the only hope was the Big Strike, the single lode that could make him rich. He might work all his life without finding it, and then stumble upon it by sheer chance....

But if he couldn't keep it when he found it, then what? What if the great mining company became so strong that they could be their own law in the Belt? What if they grew strong enough and powerful enough to challenge the United Nations on Mars itself, and gain control of the entire mining industry? What chance would the independent miner have then?

It was a frightening picture. Suddenly something began to make sense to Greg; he realized something about his father that he had never known before.

Roger Hunter had been a miner, yes. But he had been something else too, something far more important than just a miner.

Roger Hunter had been a fighter, fighting to the end for something he believed in....

Tawney interrupted Greg's thought.

"Quite an operation," he said.

Greg looked at him. "So I see."

"And very efficient, too. Our men have everything they need to work with. We can mine at far less cost than anyone else."

"But you still can't stand the idea of independent miners working the Belt," Greg said.

Tawney's eyebrows went up. "But why not? There's lots of room out here. Our operation with Jupiter Equilateral is no different from an independent miner's operation. We aren't different kinds of people." Tawney smiled. "When you get right down to it, we're both exactly the same thing ... scavengers in space, vultures picking over the dead remains to see what we can find. We come out to the asteroids, and we bring back what we want and leave the rest behind. And it doesn't matter whether we've got one ship working or four hundred ... we're still just scavengers."

"With just one difference," Greg said, turning away from the viewscreen.

"Difference?"

Greg nodded. "Even vultures don't kill their own," he said.

* * * * *

Later, when they were alone in their quarters again, Greg and Johnny stared at each other gloomily.

"Didn't you see anything that might help us?" Greg said.

"Not much. For an orbit-ship, this place is a fortress. I got a good look at that scout ship coming in ... it was armed to the teeth. Probably they all are. And they're keeping a guard now at every airlock."

"So we're sewed up tight," Greg said.

"Looks that way. They've got us, boy, and I think Tawney's patience is wearing thin, too. We're either going to have to produce or else."

"But what can we do?"

"Start bluffing."

"It seems to me we're just about bluffed out."

"I mean talk business," Johnny said. "Tell Tawney what he wants to know."

"When we don't know any more than he does? How?"

Johnny Coombs scratched his jaw. "I've been thinking about that," he said slowly, "and I wonder if we don't know a whole lot more than we think we do."

"Like what?" Greg said.

"We've all been looking for the same thing ... a Big Strike, a bonanza lode. Tawney's men have raked over every one of your Dad's claims, and they haven't turned up a thing." Johnny looked at Greg. "Makes you wonder a little, doesn't it? Your Dad was smart, but he was no magician. And how does a man go about hiding something like a vein of ore?"

"I don't know," Greg said. "It doesn't seem possible."

"It isn't possible," Johnny said flatly. "There's only one possible explanation, and we've been missing it all along. Whatever he found, it wasn't an ore strike. It was something else, something far different from anything we've been thinking of."

Greg stared at him. "But if it wasn't an ore strike, what was it?"

"I don't know," Johnny said. "But I'm sure of one thing ... it was something important enough that he was ready to die before he'd reveal it. And that means it was important enough that Tawney won't dare kill us until he finds out what it was."



9. The Invisible Man

Crouching back into the shadow, Tom Hunter waited as the heavy footsteps moved up the corridor, then back down, then up and down again. He peered around the corner for a moment, looking quickly up and down the curving corridor. The guard was twenty yards away, moving toward him in a slow measured pace. Tom jerked his head back, then peered out again as the footsteps receded.

The guard was a big man, with a heavy-duty stunner resting in the crook of his elbow. He paused, scratched himself, and resumed his pacing. Tom waited, hoping that something might distract the big man, but he moved stolidly back and forth, not too alert, but far too alert to risk breaking out into the main corridor.

Tom moved back into the darkened corridor where he was standing, trying to decide what to do. It was a side corridor, and a blind alley; it ended in a large hatchway marked HYDROPONICS, and there were no branching corridors. If he were discovered here, there would be no place to hide.

But he knew that he could never hope to accomplish his purpose here....

A hatch clanged open, and there were more footsteps down the main corridor as a change of guards hurried by. There was a rumble of voices, and Tom listened to catch the words.

"... don't care what you think, the boss says tighten it up...."

"But they got them locked in...."

"So tell it to the boss. We're supposed to check every compartment in the section every hour. Now get moving...."

The footsteps moved up and down the corridor then, and Tom heard hatches clanging open. If they sent a light down this spur ... he turned to the hatch, spun the big wheel on the door, and slipped inside just as the footsteps came closer.

The stench inside was almost overpowering. The big, darkened room was extremely warm, the air damp with vapor. The plastic-coated walls streamed with moisture. Against the walls Tom could see the great hydroponic vats that held the yeast and algae cultures that fed the crew of the ship. Water was splashing in one of the vats, and there was a gurgling sound as nutrient broth drained out, to be replaced with fresh.

He moved swiftly across the compartment, into a darkened area behind the rows of vats, and crouched down. He heard footsteps, and the ring of metal as the hatchway came open. One of the guards walked in, peered into the gloom, wrinkled his nose, and walked out again, closing the hatchway behind him.

It would do for a while ... if he didn't suffocate ... but if this ship was organized like smaller ones, it would be a blind alley. Modern hydroponic tanks did not require much servicing, once the cultures were growing; the broth was drained automatically and sluiced through a series of pipes to the rendering plant where the yeasts could be flavored and pressed into surrogate steaks and other items for spaceship cuisine. There would be no other entrances, no way to leave except the way he had come in.

And with the guards on duty, that was out of the question. He waited, listening, as the check-down continued in nearby compartments. Then silence fell again. The heavy yeast aroma had grown more and more oppressive; now suddenly a fan went on with a whir, and a cool draft of freshened reprocessed air poured down from the ventilator shaft above his head.

Getting into the orbit-ship had been easier than he had hoped. In the excitement as the new prisoners were brought aboard, security measures had been lax. No one had expected a third visitor; in consequence, no one looked for one. Huge as it was, the Jupiter Equilateral ship had never been planned as a prison, and it had taken time to stake out the guards in a security system that was at all effective. In addition, every man who served as a guard had been taken from duty somewhere else on the ship.

So there had been no guard at the airlock in the first few moments after the prisoners were taken off the Ranger ship. Tom had waited until the ship was moored, clinging to the fin strut. He watched Greg and Johnny taken through the lock, and soon the last of the crew had crossed over after securing the ship. Presently the orbit-ship airlock had gone dark, and only then had he ventured from his place of concealment, creeping along the dark hull of the Ranger ship and leaping across to the airlock.

A momentary risk, then, as he opened the lock. In the control room, he knew, a signal light would blink on a panel as the lock was opened. Tom moved as quickly as he could, hoping that in the excitement of the new visitors, the signal would go unnoticed ... or if spotted, that the spotter would assume it was only a crewman making a final trip across to the Ranger ship.

But once inside, he began to realize the magnitude of his problem. This was not a tiny independent orbit-ship with a few corridors and compartments. This was a huge ship, a vast complex of corridors and compartments and holds. There was probably a crew of a thousand men on this ship ... and there was no sign where Greg and Johnny might have been taken.

He moved forward, trying to keep to side corridors and darkened areas. In the airlock he had wrapped up his pressure suit and stored it on a rack; no one would notice it there, and it might be handy later. He had strapped his father's gun case to his side, some comfort, but a small one.

Now, crouching behind the yeast vat, he lifted out the gun, hefted it idly in his hand. It was a weapon, at least. He was not well acquainted with guns, and in the shadowy light it seemed to him that this one looked odd for a revolver; it even felt wrong, out of balance in his hand. He slipped it back in the case. After all, it had been fitted to Dad's hand, not his. And Johnny or Greg would know how to use it better than he would.

If he could find them. But to do that, he would have to search the ship. He would have to move about, he couldn't just wait in a storage hold. And with all the guards that were posted, he would certainly stumble into one of them sooner or later if he tried leaving this spot....

He shook his head, and started for the hatch. He would have to chance it. There was no way to tell how much time he had, but it was a sure bet that he didn't have very long.

In the spur corridor again, he waited until the guard's footsteps were muffled and distant. Then he darted out into the main corridor, moving swiftly and silently away from the guard. At the first hatchway he ducked inside, waited in the darkness, panting....

The guard had stopped walking. Then his footsteps resumed, but more quickly, coming down the corridor. He stopped, almost outside the hatchway door. "Funny," Tom heard him mutter. "I'd have sworn...."

Tom held his breath, waiting. This was a storage hold, but he didn't dare to move, even to take cover. The guard stood motionless for a moment, then grunted, and resumed his slow pacing.

When he had moved away Tom caught his breath in huge gasps, his heart beating in his throat. It was no use, he thought in despair. Once or twice he might get away with it, but sooner or later a guard would be alert enough to investigate an obscure noise, a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye....

There had to be another way. His eye probed the storage hold, hopelessly, and then stopped on a metal grill in the wall.

For a moment, he didn't recognize what it was. Then there was a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh as a fan went on, and he felt cool air against his cheek. He held out his hand to the grill, found the air coming from there.

A ventilation shaft. Every space craft had to have reconditioning units for the air inside the ship; the men inside needed a constant supply of fresh oxygen, but even more, without pumps to move the air in each compartment they would soon suffocate from the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air they breathed out, or bake from the heat their bodies radiated. On the other hand, the yeasts and algae required carbon dioxide and yielded copious amounts of oxygen as they grew.

In Roger Hunter's little orbit-ship the ventilation shafts were small, a loose network of foot-square ducts leading from the central pumps and air-reconditioning units to every compartment in the ship. But in a ship of this size....

The grill was over a yard wide, four feet tall. It started about shoulder height and ran up to the overhead. The ducts would network the ship, opening into every compartment, and no one would ever open them unless something went wrong.

And then he was laughing out loud, working the grill out of the slots that held it to the wall, trying to make his hands work in his excitement.

He knew he had found his answer.

The grill came loose, lifted down in a piece. He stopped short as footsteps approached in the corridor, paused, and went on. Then he peered into the black gaping hole behind the grill. It was big enough for a man to crawl in. He shinned up into the hole, and pulled the grill back into its slot behind him.

Somewhere far away he heard a throbbing of giant pumps. There was a rush of cool fresh air past his cheek, cold when it contacted the sweat pouring down his forehead. He could not quite stand up, but there was plenty of room for him to crouch and move.

Ahead of him was a black tunnel, broken only by a patch of light coming through the grill that opened into the next compartment. He started into the blackness, his heart racing.

Somewhere in the ship Johnny Coombs and Greg Hunter were prisoners ... but now, Tom knew, there was a way to escape.

* * * * *

It was a completely different world, a world within a world, a world of darkness and silence, of a thousand curving and intersecting tunnels, some large, some small. For hours it seemed to him that he had been wandering through a tomb, moving through the corridors of a dead ship, the lone surviving crewman. There was some contact with the other world, of course, the world of the spaceship outside ... each compartment had its metal grill, and he passed many of them. But there were like doors that only he knew existed. He met no one in these corridors, there was no danger of sudden discovery and arrest in these dark alleys....

His boots had made too much noise as he started out, so he had slipped them off, hanging them from his belt and moving on in his stocking feet. As he went from duct to duct, he had an almost ridiculous feeling of freedom and power. In every sense, he was an invisible man. Not one soul on this great ship knew he was here, or even suspected. He had the run of the ship, complete freedom to go wherever he chose. He could move from compartment to compartment as silently and invisibly as if he had no substance at all.

* * * * *

He knew the first job was to learn the pattern of the ducts, and orientation was a problem. He had heard stories of men getting lost in the deep underground mining tunnels on Mars, wandering in circles for days until their food gave out and they starved. And there was that hazard here, for every duct looked like every other one.

But there was a difference here, because the ducts curved just as the main ship's corridors did. He could always identify the center of the ship by the force of false gravity pulling the other way. Furthermore, as the ducts drew closer to the pumps and reconditioning units, they opened into larger vents, and the noise of the pumps thundered in his ears. After an hour of exploration, Tom was certain that from any place in the ship he could at least find his way to the outer layer, and from there to one of the scout-ship airlocks.

Finding Greg and Johnny was quite a different matter.

He could not see enough through the compartment grills to identify just what the compartments were; he was forced to rely on what he could hear. The engine rooms were easily identified. In one area he heard the banging of pots and pans, the steaming of kettles ... obviously the galley. He found the control area. He could hear the clatter of typing instruments, the click-click-click of the computers working out the orbits and trajectories for the scout-ships as they moved out from the orbit-ship or came back in. In another compartment he heard a dispatcher chattering his own special code-language into a microphone in a low-pitched voice. He passed another grill, and then stopped short as a familiar voice drifted through.

Merrill Tawney's voice.

Tom hugged the grill, straining to catch the words. The company man sounded angry; the man he was talking to sounded even angrier. "I can't help what you want or don't want, Merrill, I can only report what we've found, and that's nothing at all. Every one of those claims has been searched twice over. Doc and his boys went over them, and we didn't find anything they missed. I think you're barking up the wrong tree."

"There's got to be something," Tawney said, his voice tight with anger. "Hunter couldn't have taken anything away from there, he didn't have a chance to. You read the reports..."

"I know," the other said wearily, "I know what the reports said."

"Then what he found is still there. There's no other possibility," Tawney said.

"We went over that rock with a microscope. We blew it to shreds. Assay has gone through the fragments literally piece by piece. They found low grade iron, a trace of nickel, a little tin, and lots of granite. If we never found anything richer than that, we'd have been out of business ten years ago."

There was a long silence. Tom pressed closer to the grill. Then he heard Tawney slam his fist into his palm. "You know what Roger Hunter's doing, don't you?" he said. "He's making fools of us, that's what! The man's dead, and he's making us look like idiots. If we hadn't been so sure we had the lode spotted ..." He broke off. "Well, that's done, we can't undo it. But this brat of his...."

"Any luck there?"

"Not a word. He's playing coy."

"Maybe he doesn't know anything. Doc made a bad mistake when he blasted the other one ... suppose he was the only one that knew."

"All right, it was a mistake," Tawney snapped. "What was he supposed to do, let him get back to Mars? We've got a good front there, but it's not that good. If the United Nations gets a toehold out here, the whole Belt will go into their pocket, you realize that. They're waiting for us to make one slip." He paused, and Tom heard him pacing the compartment. "But I think we've got our boy. This one knows. We've been spoiling him so far, that's all. Well, now we start digging. When I get through with him, he'll be begging us to let him tell. You just watch me, as soon as the okay comes through...."

Tom drew back from the grill, moving on in the darkness. So far he had not rushed his exploration ... there was a chance to use the ducts for escape, he wanted to know them well. But now he knew the hour was getting late. So far Greg and Johnny had been stalling Tawney ... but Tawney was getting impatient.

He moved quickly and he thought again of what Tawney had said. Tawney was right about one thing ... there was no way that Dad could have hidden a Big Strike so nobody could find it. It had to be there....

And yet it wasn't. He and Greg hadn't found it. Tawney's men hadn't found it, either. Why not? There must be a reason.

But he could not put his finger on it.

Half an hour later he was seriously worried. Half the compartments in the area were deserted, the men leaving for the cafeteria. The thought reminded Tom how hungry he was, and thirsty. His small emergency ration kit was empty. He toyed with the thought of sneaking into a food storage compartment, then thrust it out of his mind as too risky. He had to find Greg and Johnny before anything.

He passed a grill, and heard a murmur of voices; something in the deep bass rumble caught his ear, and he stopped, listened.

The voices stopped also.

He waited for them to begin, pressing against the grill. Johnny Coombs was not the only man with a deep bass voice, he might have been mistaken. He listened, but there was no sound. He heard the whir of a fan begin, still no sound, not even footsteps.

And then it happened, so fast he was taken completely off guard. The grill suddenly gave way, pitching him forward into the compartment. Something struck him behind the ear as he fell; there was a grunt, a sharp command, and he was pinned to the floor in the semi-darkness of the compartment.

Then he heard a gasp, and he opened his eyes. He was staring into his brother's startled face. Greg was pinning his shoulders to the carpeted deck, and behind him Johnny Coombs had a fist raised....

But they had stopped in mid-air, like a tableau of puppets. Greg gaped, his jaw falling open, and Tom heard himself saying, "What are you trying to do, kill a guy? Seems to me one time is enough."

He had found them.



10. The Trigger

In the first instance of astonishment they were speechless. Later, Tom said it was the first time in his life that he had ever seen Greg totally without words; his brother jumped back, as if he had seen a ghost, and his mouth worked, but no sounds came out.

"Don't worry, it's me all right," Tom said, "and I'm mighty hungry."

Greg and Johnny stared at the black hole behind the grill ... and then Greg was pumelling him, pounding him on the back, so excited he couldn't get a sentence out, and Johnny was hovering over them, incredulous but forced to believe his eyes, like a father overwhelmed by the impossible behavior of a pair of unpredictable children. It was a jubilant reunion. They broke open the cabinets and refrigerator in the back of the lounge and pulled out surro-ham and rolls, while Johnny got some coffee going. Tom was so famished he could hardly wait to make sandwiches of the ham. He ate it as fast as he got it.

But finally he slowed up, got his mouth empty enough to talk. "All right, let's have the story," Greg said, still looking as though he couldn't believe his eyes. "The last we saw, you were blown into atoms out there in that Scavenger ... you've got some nerve turning up now and scaring us half out of our skins...."

"You want me to go back in my hole?"

"Just sit still and talk!"

Tom told them, then, starting from the beginning.

Through it all Greg stared in admiration. "We've got a genius among us, that's all," he said finally. "And I always thought you were the timid one...."

"But what else could I do?" Tom said. "You know what they say about grabbing a tiger by the tail ... once you get hold, you've got to hold on."

"Okay," Greg said, "but the next time I make a crack about your retiring nature, remind me to stick my foot in my mouth."

"I'll do it for him," Johnny Coombs rumbled.

Tom nodded toward the open grill. "The only thing I don't see is how you knew I was back there."

Johnny grinned. "We were busy taking down the grill when you came along. We'd found three microphones in this place, and figured they might have one behind the grill. And then we heard somebody breathing back there ... we thought they'd posted a guard back there, just to snoop us."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't hit him any harder...."

Johnny started to say something, then stopped, cocked his head toward the door. There were footsteps in the corridor outside; they came closer, stopped by the door. "Quick," Johnny hissed, "back inside!"

There was no time to look for other concealment. Tom leaped across the room, jumped up into the shaft again, and Greg slammed the grate up into place just as the hatchway door swung open.

Merrill Tawney walked into the room, with two burly guards behind him.

* * * * *

For the first few seconds, Greg was certain that they were lost. He stood with his back to the ventilator grill, frozen in his tracks as the fat little company man came in the room. He tried to keep his face blank, but he knew he wasn't succeeding. He saw the puzzled frown form on Tawney's face.

The company man motioned the guards into the room, peered suspiciously at Greg and Johnny. "Am I interrupting something, by any chance?"

"Nothing at all," Johnny blurted. "We were just talking."

"Talking." Tawney repeated the word as if it were some strange language he didn't quite understand. He looked at the guard. "Let's just check them."

While one guard patted down their clothes, the other withdrew a stunner, held it on ready. Tawney prowled the lounge. He glanced at the food on the table, then reached under the chair cushion and withdrew the disconnected microphone, looked at the loose wires, and tossed it aside.

"They're clean," the guard said.

Tawney's face was a study of uneasiness, but he clearly could not pinpoint what the trouble was. Finally he shrugged, turned on the smile again, although his eyes remained watchful. "Well, maybe you won't mind if I join in the talking for a while," he said. "You've been comfortable? No complaints?"

"No complaints," Greg said.

"Then I presume we're ready to talk business." He looked at Greg.

"You said you were ready to bargain," Greg said, "but I haven't heard any terms yet."

"Terms? Very simple. You direct us to the lode, we give you half of everything we realize from it," Tawney said, smiling.

"You mean you'll write us a contract? With a U.N. witness to it?"

"Well, hardly ... under the circumstances. I'm afraid you'll have to take our word."

Greg looked at the company man, and shook his head. "Not that I don't trust you," he said, "but I'm afraid I can't give you what you want," Greg said.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know where Dad made his strike."

The company man's face darkened. "Somebody knows where it is. Your father would never have found something like that without telling his own sons...."

"Sorry," Greg said. "Of course, I can tell you where you can find out, if you want to go look."

"We've already searched his records...."

"Some of his records," Greg said. "Not all of them. There was a compartment behind the main control panel in Dad's orbit-ship. Dad used it to store deeds, claims, other important papers. There was a packet of notes in there before your men fired on the ship. But of course, maybe you searched more thoroughly, the second time."

Tawney stared at him for a moment, then at Johnny. Johnny Coombs shrugged his shoulders solemnly, and shook his head. Without a word, the little company man walked to the intercom speaker on the wall. He spoke sharply into it, waited, then had a brief, pungent conversation with someone. Then he turned back to Greg, his face heavy with suspicion. "You saw these papers?"

"Certainly I saw them. I didn't have time to read them through, but what else could they be?"

"Let me warn you," Tawney said coldly, "if I send a crew out there on a wild goose chase, the party will be over when they get back, do you understand? You've been given every consideration. If this is a fool's errand, you'll pay for it very dearly." He turned on his heel, snarled at one of the guards. "I want them watched every minute," he said. "One of you stay with them constantly. It won't take long to find out if this is a stall...."

He stalked out, and the hatchway clanged behind him. One guard went along; the big one with the stunner stayed behind, eyeing his prisoners unpleasantly. The stunner was in his hand, the safety off.

Johnny Coombs started across the room toward the kitchennette, passing close to the guard. Suddenly he turned, swung his fist heavily down on the guard's neck. The stunner crackled, but Greg had jumped aside. Another blow from Johnny's fist sent the gun flying. Another blow, and the guard's legs slid out from under him. He fell unconscious to the floor.

In an instant they were across the room, lifting down the grill, helping Tom out of his hiding place. "Okay, boy," Johnny said to Greg, "I guess you pulled the trigger with that story of yours."

"Not me," Greg said. "Tom did. He's the one that showed us the way out ... the same way he came in."

* * * * *

The guard was out for a while, they made sure of that first. Then there was a hasty consultation. "The airlocks are guarded," Johnny said, "and if they tumble to the ventilator shafts, they can smoke us out in no time. How are we going to get a scout-ship without showing ourselves? For that matter, how are we going to get a scout-ship away from here without being blown up the way the Scavenger was blown up?"

"I think I know a way," Tom said. "We have to have something to keep a lot of the crew busy. If we could get to the ship's generators and put them out of commission somehow, it might do it."

"Why?" Greg wanted to know.

"Because of the air supply," Tom said. "Without the generators, the fans won't run. They'll have to get a crew to fix them or they'll suffocate."

"But that would only take a few men," Johnny said. "As soon as the generators went out, they'd look for us, and if we were missing ... well, they'd have the whole crew beating the bushes for us. It wouldn't be long before somebody thought of the ventilators."

"But we've got to do something, and do it fast," Tom said.

"I know." Johnny chewed his lip. "It's a good idea, but we need more than just the generators. We've got to disable the ship ... throw so many things at them so fast from so many different directions that they don't know which way to turn. That means we'd need to split up, and we'd need weapons." He hefted the guard's Markheim. "One stunner between three of us isn't enough."

"Well, we have this." Tom unbuckled Roger Hunter's gun case from his belt. "Dad's revolver. It's not a stunner, but it might help." He tossed the case to Johnny. "I can give you both a rundown on how the shafts go. We could plan to meet at a certain spot in a certain length of time...."

He broke off, looking at Johnny. The big miner had taken Roger Hunter's gun from the case, and hefted it in his hand, started to check it automatically as Tom talked. But now his hand froze as he stared at the weapon.

"What's wrong?" Tom asked.

"This gun is wrong," Johnny said. "All wrong. Where did you get this thing?"

"From Dad's spacer pack, the one the Patrol brought back. The Major gave it to us in Sun Lake City." Tom peered at the gun. "Is it broken or something? It's just Dad's revolver...."

"It is, eh?" Johnny turned the gun over in his hand. "Whoever told you about guns?"

"What's wrong with it?"

There was an odd expression on Johnny's face as he handed the weapon back to Tom. "Take a look at it," he said. "Tell me whether it's loaded or not."

Tom looked at it. Except for a few hours on the firing range, he had had no experience with guns; he couldn't have taken down a Markheim and reassembled it if his life depended on it. But he had seen his father take the old revolver out of the leather case many times before.

Now Tom could see that this was not the same gun.

The thing in his hand was large and awkward. The hand-grips didn't fit; there was no trigger guard, and no trigger. Several inches along the gleaming metal barrel was a shiny stud, and below it a dial with notches on it.

"That's funny," Tom said. "I've never seen this thing before."

Greg took it from him, balanced it in his hand. "Doesn't feel right," he said. "All out of balance."

"Look at the barrel," Johnny said quietly.

Greg looked. There was no hole in the end of the barrel. "This thing's crazy," he said.

"And then some," Johnny said. "You haven't had this out of the case since you took it from the pack?"

"Just once," said Tom. "And I put it right back. I hardly looked at it. Look, maybe it's just a new model Dad got."

"It's no new model. I'm not even sure it's a gun," Johnny said. "Doesn't feel like a gun."

"What happens when you push the stud here?" Greg asked.

Johnny licked his lips nervously. "Try it," he said.

Greg leveled the thing at the rear wall of the lounge and pressed the stud. There was a sharp buzzing sound, and a blinding flash of blue light against the wall. It looked for all the world like the flash of a live power line shorting out. They squinted at the flash, rubbed their eyes....

And stared at the wall. Or at what was left of the wall, because most of the wall was gone. The metal had bellied out in a six-foot hole into the storage hold beyond....

Johnny Coombs whistled. "This thing did that?" he whispered.

"It must have...."

"But there's no gun ever made that could do that." He walked over to the hole in the wall. "That's half-inch steel plate. There's no way to pack that kind of energy into a hand gun."

They stared at the innocent-looking weapon in Greg's hand. "Whatever it is, Dad must have put it in the gun-case."

"Yes, he must have," Johnny said.

"Well, don't you see what that means? Dad must have found it somewhere. Somewhere out here in the Belt ... a gun that no man could have made...."

He took the weapon, ran his finger along the gleaming barrel. "I wonder," he said, "what else Dad might have found out there."

* * * * *

Somewhere below them they heard a hatch clang shut, and even deeper in the ship generator motors began throbbing in a steady even rhythm. In the silence of the lounge they could hear their own breathing, and outside a thousand tiny sounds of the ship's activity were audible.

But now they had attention only for the odd-shaped piece of metal in Greg's hand, and for the hole that gaped in the wall.

"You think that this was what Dad found?" Greg said. "The Big Strike he told Johnny about?"

"It must be part of it," Tom said.

"But what is it? And where did it come from? It doesn't make sense," Greg protested.

"It doesn't make sense the way we've been looking at it," Tom said. "All we've found was some gobbledegook in Dad's private log to tell us what he found ... but it couldn't have been a vein of ore, or Tawney's men would have unearthed it. It had to be something else. Something that was so big and important that Dad didn't even dare let Johnny in on it."

"Yes, that's been the craziest part of it, to me," Johnny said. "I've done a lot of mining with your Dad. If he'd hit rich ore, he would have taken me out there to mine it with him. But he didn't. He said it was something he had to work on alone for a while, and he sent me back."

"As if he'd found something that scared him," Tom said, "or something that he didn't understand. He was afraid to tell anybody. And whatever he found, he managed to hide it somewhere, so that nobody would find it...."

"Then why didn't he hide this part of it, too?" Greg said.

"Maybe to be sure there was some trace left, if anything happened to him," Tom said.

They were silent for a moment. The only sound was the stertorous breathing of the unconscious guard. "Well," Greg said finally, "I have to admit it makes sense. It makes other things add up better, too. Dad was no fool, he must have known that Tawney was onto something. And Dad would never have risked his life for an ore strike. He'd either have made a deal with Tawney or let him hijack the lode, if that was all there was to it. But there's still one big question ... where did he hide what he found? And we aren't going to find the answer here." He walked over to the hole in the wall.

"Made quite a mess of it, didn't it?" Johnny said.

"Looks like it. I wonder what that thing would do to a ship's generator plant." He turned to Johnny. "We haven't much time. With this thing, we could tear this ship apart, leave them so confused they'll never know what broke loose. And if we could get that gun back to Major Briarton, he'd have to listen to us, and get the U.N. Patrol into the search...."

They had been so intent on their talking that they did not hear the footsteps in the corridor until the door swung open. It was another guard, the one who had departed with Tawney. He stopped short, blinking at his companion on the floor, and then at the gaping hole in the wall. When he saw the twins, side by side, his jaw sagged and a strangled sound came from his throat.

Then Johnny grabbed his arm, jerked him into the lounge, and slammed the hatch shut. Greg pulled the stunner from his holster and tossed it to Tom. The guard let out a roar, twisted free, and met Johnny's fist as he came around. He sagged at the knees and slid to the floor beside the other guard. "All right," Johnny said, "we've dealt the cards, now we'd better play the hand. Tom, you first."

Tom pulled the ventilator grill down, and climbed up into the shaft. Greg followed, with Johnny at his heels, pulling the grill back up into place from the inside. They waited for a moment, but there was no sound from the lounge.

"All right," Johnny said breathlessly. "Let's move."

Swiftly they started down the dark tunnel.



11. The Haunted Ship

They did not pause, even to catch their breath, for the first twenty minutes as Tom led them swiftly and silently down through the maze of corridors and chutes that made up the ventilation system of the huge ship. Greg lost his bearing completely in the first twenty seconds; each time his brother paused at a junction of tubes, he felt a wave of panic rise up in his throat ... suppose they lost themselves in here! He heard Johnny's trousers flapping behind him, saw Tom's figure flit past another grill up ahead, and plunged doggedly on.

It was amazingly hard to move quietly. Even in stocking feet they made a soft thud with each footfall.

But there was no sign of detection, no sound of alarm. Finally they came out into a large shaft which allowed them to stand upright, and they stopped to catch their breath.

"Main tube to the living quarters," Tom said when they had caught up to him. "Joins with the lower-level tube by a series of chutes. We've actually been circumnavigating the ship ... I wanted to get as far away from that lounge compartment as possible, in case they check up on you right away."

"We can't have much time," Johnny said. "That second guard must have been coming to relieve the other, and when the first one doesn't report back, they'll smell something fishy."

* * * * *

They talked it over for a moment. Johnny had been careful to leave the hatchway into the corridor ajar before he climbed into the ventilator shaft, and then he had pulled the shaft snugly into place behind him. Anyone who came would find two unconscious guards, a burnt-out hole in the wall, and the door unlocked.

"We'll hope that he takes things at face value, and assumes we're at large in the ship somewhere, for a while at least," Johnny said. "That hole in the wall is going to set them back a couple of steps, too."

"But they'll sound the alarm, at least," Tom said.

"You bet they will! They'll have every man on the crew shaking down the ship for us. But they may not think of the ventilators until they can't find us anywhere else."

"But sooner or later they're bound to think of it."

"That's true," Johnny said. "Unless they keep seeing us in the ship. The way I figure it, this crew has been on battle stations plenty of times. They'll be able to search the whole ship in half an hour. We're just going to have to show ourselves ... at least enough to keep them searching."

"Well, what if they do think of the ventilators?" Greg said. "They'd still have a time finding us."

"Maybe, but don't underestimate Tawney. He might just mask up his crew and flood the tubes with cyanide."

They thought about that for a minute. There was no sound here but their own breathing, and the low chug-chug-chug of the pumps somewhere deep in the ship. Momentarily they expected to hear the raucous clang of the alarm bell, as some crew member or another walked into the lounge and found them gone. But so far there was no sign they had been discovered missing. "No," Johnny said finally, "if we just hide out in here, and hope for a chance at one of the scout ships, they'll find us eventually. But we've got three big advantages, if we can figure out how to use them. That fancy gun, for one. A way to get around the ship, for another ... and the fact that there's one more of us than they count on." He flipped on his pocket flash, began drawing lines on the dusty floor of the shaft. "My idea is to keep them so busy fighting little fires that they won't have a chance to worry about where the big one is."

He drew a rough outline-sketch of the organization of the ship. "This look right to you, from what you've seen?" he asked Tom.

"Pretty much," Tom said. "There are more connecting tubes."

"All the better. We want to get the generators with our little toy here first. That'll darken the ship, and put the blowers out of commission in case they think of using gas. Also, it will cut out their computers and missile-launching rigs, which might give us a chance to get a scout-ship away in one piece if we could get aboard one."

"All right, the generators are first," Tom said. "But then what? There are four hundred men on this ship. They'll have every airlock triple guarded. They'll block us for sure."

"Not when we get through, they won't," Johnny grinned. "We've got an old friend aboard who's going to help us."

"Friend?"

"Ever hear of panic?" Johnny said. "Just listen a minute."

Quickly then, he outlined his plan. Tom and Greg listened, watched Johnny make marks with his finger in the dust. When he finished, Greg whistled softly. "You missed your life work," he said. "You should have gone into crime."

"If I'd had a ghost to help me, I might have," Johnny said.

"It's perfect," Tom said, "if it works. But it all depends on one thing ... keeping it rolling after we start...."

For another five minutes they went over the details. Then Johnny clapped them each on the shoulder. "It's up to you two," he said. "Let's go."

They moved down the large shaft to the place where it broke into several spurs. Johnny started down the chute toward the engine rooms; Tom and Greg headed in opposite directions toward the main body of the ship. Just as they broke up, they heard a muffled metallic sound from the nearest compartment grill.

It was the clang-clang-clang of the orbit-ship's general alarm.

* * * * *

Crewmen stopped with food halfway to their mouths, jerked away from tables. Orders buzzed along a dozen wires, and section chiefs began reporting their battle-stations alert and ready. Finally Tawney snapped on the general public address system speaker. "Now get this," he roared. "I want every inch of this ship searched ... every corridor, every compartment. I want a special crew standing by for missile launching. I want double guards at every airlock. If they get a ship away from here, the man who lets them through had better be dead when I find him...." He broke off, clutching the speaker until his voice was under control again. "All right, move. They're armed, but there's no place they can go. Find them."

A section-chief came back over the speaker. "Dead or alive, boss?"

"Alive, you idiot! At least the Hunter brat. I'll take the other one any way you can get him."

He switched off, and waited, pacing the control cabin like a caged animal. Ten minutes later a buzzer sounded. "Hydroponics, boss. All clear."

"No sign of them?"

"Nothing."

Another buzz. "Number seven ore hold. Nothing here."

Still another buzz. "Crew's quarters. Nothing, boss."

One by one the reports came in. Fuming, Tawney checked off the sections, watched the net draw tighter throughout the ship. They were somewhere, they had to be....

But nobody seemed to find them.

He was buzzing for his first mate when the power went off. The lights went out, the speaker went dead in his hand. The computers sighed contentedly and stopped computing. Abruptly the emergency circuits went into operation, flooding the darkness with harsh white lights. The intercom started buzzing again.

"Engine room, boss."

"What happened down there?" Tawney roared.

The man sounded like he'd just run the mile. "Generators," he panted. "Blown out."

"Well, get somebody in there to fix them. Have a crew seal off the area...."

"Can't, boss. Fix them, I mean."

"Why not? What have we got electricians for?"

"There's nothing left to fix. The generators aren't wrecked ... they're demolished...."

"Then get the pair that did it...."

"They're not here. We've been sealed up tight. There's no way anybody could have gotten in here...."

After that, things began to get confusing.

* * * * *

For a while Merrill Tawney thought that his crew was going crazy ... and then he began to wonder if he were the one who was losing his mind.

Whatever the case, Merrill Tawney was certain of one thing. The things that were happening on his orbit-ship could not possibly be happening.

A guard in one of the outer shell storage holds called in with a disquieting report. Greg Hunter, it seemed, had just been spotted vanishing into one of the storage compartments from the main outer-shell corridor. When the guard had broken through the jammed hatchway to collar his trapped victim, there was no sign of the victim anywhere around.

At the same moment, a report came in from a guard on the opposite side of the ship. He had just spotted Greg Hunter there, it seemed, moving down a spur corridor. The guard had held his fire (according to Tawney's orders) and summoned help to corner the quarry ... but when help arrived, the quarry had vanished.

* * * * *

Five minutes later the Hunter boy was discovered in the Hydroponics section, busily reducing all the yeast vats to shambles with a curious weapon that seemed to eat holes in things. It ate the deck out from under the guard's feet, sending him plunging through the floor into the galley. By the time he had scrambled back again, the Hunter boy was gone, and a rapid move to seal off the region failed to turn him up again. The guard was upset; Tawney was a great deal more upset, because at the time Greg Hunter was (reportedly) playing havoc with the yeast-vats in Hydroponics he was also (reportedly) knocking guards down like ten-pins in the main corridor off the engine room while reinforcements tried to pin him down with a wide-beam stunner....

Quite suddenly emergency circuits closed and lights flashed in the control cabin, the special signal for a meteor-collision with the outer shell in No. 3 hold. Tawney signalled for the section chief frantically. "What's happening down there?"

"I can't talk," the section chief gasped. "Gotta get into a suit, we're leaking in here...."

"Well, plug up the hole!"

"The hole's four feet wide, sir!" There was a fit of coughing and the contact broke. The signals for No. 4 hold and No. 5 hold were flashing now; while the crew members in the vicinity scrambled for pressure suits someone systematically proceeded to blow holes in No. 9, No. 10 and No. 11 holds....

It was impossible. The reports came in thick and fast. Greg Hunter was in two places at once, and everywhere he went ... in both places ... there was a trail of unbelievable destruction. Bulkheads demolished, gaping holes torn in the outer shell, the air-reconditioning units smashed beyond repair.... Tawney buzzed for his first mate.

An emergency switch cut into the line, with the frantic voice of a section chief. Johnny Coombs had been spotted disappearing into the ventilator shaft in the engine sector. "Well, go in after him!" Tawney screamed. He got his first mate finally, and snarled orders into the speaker. "They're in the ventilators. Get a crew in there and stop them."

But it was dark in the ventilator shafts. No emergency lights in there. Worse, the crewmen were hearing the things that were being whispered around the ship. The ventilator shafts yawned menacingly before them; they went in reluctantly. Once in the dark maze of tunnels, identification was difficult. Two guards met each other headlong in the darkness, and put each other out of the fight in a flurry of nervous stunner-fire. While they searched more of the holds were broken open, leaking air through gaping rents in the hull....

Tawney felt the panic spreading; he tried to curb it, and it spread in spite of him. The fugitives were appearing and disappearing like wraiths. Reports back to control cabin took on a frantic note, confused and garbled. Now the second-level bulkheads were being attacked. Over a third of the compartments were leaking precious air into outer space.

When a terrified section chief came through with a report that two Greg Hunters had been spotted by the same man at the same time, and that the guards in the sector were shooting at anything that moved, including other guards, Tawney made his way to the radio cabin and put through a frantic signal to Jupiter Equilateral headquarters on Mars.

The contact took forever, even with the ship's powerful emergency boosters. By the time someone at headquarters was reading him, Tawney's report sounded confused. He was trying for the third time to explain, clearly and logically, how two men and a ghost were scuttling his orbit-ship under his very feet when one wall of the cabin vanished in a crackle of blue fire, and he found himself staring at two Greg Hunters and a grim-faced Johnny Coombs.

He made squeaky noises into the microphone and dropped it with a crash. He groped for a chair; Johnny jerked him to his feet again. "A scout-ship," he said tersely. "Clear it for launching. We want one with plenty of fuel, and we don't want a single guard anywhere near the airlock." He picked up an intercom microphone and thrust it into the little fat man's trembling hand. "Now move! And you'd better be sure they understand you, because you're coming with us."

Merrill Tawney stared first at Tom, then at Greg, and finally at the microphone. Then he moved. The orders he gave to his section chiefs were very clear and concise.

He had never argued with a ghost before, and he didn't care to start now.

* * * * *

It was over so quickly that it seemed to Tom it had just begun, and if so much had not been at stake, it might have been fun.

It had been the gun ... the remarkable gun that Roger Hunter had left as his legacy ... that had been the key. It ate through steel and aluminum alloy like putty. Whatever its power source, however it worked, by whatever means it had been built, there had been no match for it on the orbit-ship.

It had worked ... and that was all that mattered right then.

With it, and with the advantage of a ghost that walked like a man ... Tom Hunter, to be exact ... they had reduced the Jupiter Equilateral orbit-ship to a smoking wreck in something less than thirty minutes.

The signal came back that a scout-ship was ready, unguarded. Johnny prodded Tawney with the stunner. "You first," he said.

"But where are you taking me?"

"You'll see," Johnny said.

"It was a trick," Tawney said, glaring at Tom. "They told me they shot your ship to pieces...."

"The ship, yes," Tom said. "Not me."

"Well ... well, that's good, that's good," Tawney said quickly. He turned to Greg. "You don't have to take me back ... the bargain is still good...."

"Move," Johnny Coombs said.

With Tawney between them, Greg and Tom marched down the corridor toward the airlock, with Johnny bringing up the rear. No one stopped them. No one even came near them. One crewman stumbled on them in the corridor; he saw Tawney with a gun in his back, and fled in terror.

They found the scout-ship, and strapped Tawney down to an accelleration bunk, binding his hands and feet so he couldn't move. Greg checked the controls while Tom and Johnny strapped down. A moment later the engines fired, and the leaking wreck of the orbit-ship fell away, dwindling and disappearing in the blackness of space.

It was a quiet journey. The red dot that was Mars grew larger every hour. One of the three stayed awake at all times to watch Tawney while the others slept. During the second rest period, Tom woke up while Greg was on duty.

"How's our prisoner doing?" Tom asked.

"No problem there, he can barely move. I almost wish he'd try something, he's too quiet."

It was true. Tawney had recovered from his shock ... but rather than grow more worried as Mars grew large on the screen, he seemed to become more cheerful by the minute. "He doesn't seem very worried, does he?" Tom said.

"No, and it doesn't quite add. We've got enough on him to get Jupiter Equilateral pushed right out of the Belt."

"I'd still feel better if we had the whole picture for the Major," Tom said. "We still don't know what Dad found, or where he hid it...."

The uneasiness grew. Tawney ignored them, staring at the image of the red planet on the viewscreen almost eagerly. Then, eight hours out of Sun Lake City a U.N. Patrol ship appeared, moving toward them swiftly. "Intercepting orbit," Greg said. "Looks like they were waiting for us."

They watched as the big ship moved in to tangential orbit, matching its speed to theirs. Then Greg snapped the communicator switch. "Sound off," he said cheerfully. "We've got a prize for you."

"Stand by, we're boarding you," the Patrol sent back. "And put your weapons aside."

Four scooters broke from the side of the Patrol ship. Greg activated the airlock. Five minutes later a man in Patrol uniform with captain's bars stepped into the control cabin, a stunner on ready in his hand. Three Patrolmen came in behind him.

The captain looked around the cabin, then saw Tawney, and took a deep breath. "Well, thank the stars you're safe at any rate. Pete, Jimmy, take the controls."

"Hold on," Greg said. "We don't need a pilot."

The Captain looked at him. "Sorry, but we're taking you in. There won't be any trouble unless you make it. You three are under arrest, and I'm authorized to make it stick if I have to. I suggest you just cooperate."

They stared at him. Then Johnny said, "What are the charges?"

"You ought to know," the Captain said. "We have a formal complaint from the main offices of Jupiter Equilateral, charging you with piracy, murder, kidnapping of a company official, and totally wrecking a company orbit ship. I don't quite see how you managed it, but we're going to find out in short order."

There was a stunned silence in the cabin, and then a sound came from the rear of the cabin.

Merrill Tawney was laughing.



12. The Sinister Bonanza

They were taken to a small, drab internment room. A half hour passed and still no word from the Major. From the moment the Patrol crew had boarded them, everything had seemed like a bad dream. The shock of the arrest, the realization that the Captain had been serious when he reeled off the charges lodged against them ... they had been certain it was some kind of ill-planned joke until they saw the delegation of Jupiter Equilateral officials waiting at the port to greet Merrill Tawney like a man returned from the dead. They had watched Tawney climb into the sleek company car and drive off toward the gate, while the Captain had escorted them without a word down to the internment rooms.

The door clicked, and the Captain looked in. "All right, come along now," he said.

"Is the Major here?" Tom said.

"You'll see the Major soon enough." The Captain herded them into another room, where a clerk efficiently fingerprinted them. Then they went down a ramp to a jitney-platform, and boarded a U.N. official car. The trip into the city was slow; rush-hour traffic from the port was heavy. When they reached U.N. headquarters, there was another wait in an upper level ante-room. The Captain stood stiffly with his hands behind his back and ignored them.

"Look, this is ridiculous," Greg burst out finally. "We haven't done anything. You haven't even let us make a statement."

"Make your statement to the Major. It's his headache, not mine, I'm happy to say."

"But you let that man walk out of there scot free...."

The Captain looked at him. "If I were you," he said, "I'd stop complaining and start worrying. If I had Jupiter Equilateral at my throat, I'd worry plenty, because once they start they don't stop."

A signal light blinked, and he took them downstairs. Major Briarton was behind his desk; his eyes tired, his face grim. He dismissed the Captain, and motioned them to seats. "All right, let's have the story," he said, "and by the ten moons of Saturn it had better be convincing, because I've about had my fill of you three."

He listened without interruption as Tom told the story, with Greg and Johnny adding details from time to time. Tom told him everything, from the moment they had blasted off for Roger Hunter's claim to the moment the Patrol ship had boarded them, except for a single detail.

He didn't mention the remarkable gun from Roger Hunter's gun case. The gun was still in the spacer's pack he had slung over his shoulder; he had not mentioned it when the Patrolmen had taken their stunners away. Now as he talked, he felt a twinge of guilt in not mentioning it....

But he had a reason. Dad had died to keep that gun secret. It seemed only right to keep the secret a little longer. When he came to the part about their weapons, he simply spoke of "Dad's gun" and omitted any details.

And through the story, the Major listened intently, interrupting only occasionally, pulling at his lip and scowling.

"So we decided that the best way to convince you that we had the evidence you wanted was to bring Tawney back with us," Tom concluded.

"A brilliant maneuver," the Major said dryly. "A real stroke of genius."

"But then the Patrol ship intercepted us and told us we were under arrest. And when we landed, they let Tawney drive off without even questioning him."

"The least we could do, under the circumstances," the Major said.

"Well, I'd like to know why," Greg broke in bitterly. "Why pick on us? We've just been telling you...."

"Yes, yes, I heard every word of it," the Major sighed. "If you knew the trouble ... oh, what's the use? I've spent the last three solid hours talking myself hoarse, throwing in every bit of authority I could muster and jeopardizing my position as Coordinator here, for the sole purpose of keeping you three idiots out of jail for a few hours."

"Jail!"

"That's what I said. The brig. The place they put people when they don't behave. You three are sitting on a nice, big powder keg right now, and when it blows I don't know how much of you is going to be left."

"Do you think we're lying?" Greg said.

"Do you know what you're charged with?" the Major snapped back.

"Some sort of nonsense about piracy...."

"Plus kidnapping. Plus murder. To say nothing of totally disabling a seventeen-million-dollar orbit-ship and placing the lives of four hundred crewmen in jeopardy." The Major picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. "According to Merrill Tawney's statement, the three of you hijacked a company scout-ship that chanced to be scouting in the vicinity of your father's claim. Your attack was unprovoked and violent. Everybody on Mars knows you were convinced that Jupiter Equilateral was responsible for your father's death." He looked up. "In the absence of any evidence, I might add, although I did my best to tell you that." He rattled the report-sheet. "All right. You took the scout-ship by force, with the pilot at gunpoint, and made him home in on his orbit-ship. Then you proceeded to reduce that orbit-ship to a leaking wreck, although Tawney tried to reason with you and even offered you amnesty if you would desist. By the time the crew stopped shooting each other in the dark ... fifteen of them subsequently expired, it says here ... you had stolen another scout-ship and kidnapped Tawney for the purpose of extorting a confession out of Jupiter Equilateral, threatening him with torture if he did not comply...." The Major dropped the paper to the desk.

Johnny Coombs picked it up, looked at it owlishly, and put it back again. "Pretty large operation for three men, Major," he said.

The Major shrugged. "You were armed. That orbit-ship was registered as a commercial vessel. It had no reason to expect a surprise attack, and had no way to defend itself."

"They were armed to the teeth," Greg said disgustedly. "Why don't you send somebody out to look?"

"Oh, I could, but why waste the time and fuel? There wouldn't be any weapons aboard."

"Then how do they explain the fact that the Scavenger was blown to bits and Dad's orbit-ship ripped apart from top to bottom?"

"Details," the Major said. "Mere details. I'm sure that the company's lawyers can muddy the waters quite enough so that little details like that are overlooked. Particularly with a sympathetic jury and a judge that plays along."

He stood up and ran his hand through his hair. "All right, granted I'm painting the worst picture possible ... but I'm afraid that's the way it's going to be. I believe your story, don't worry about that. I know why you went out there to the Belt and I can't really blame you, I suppose. But you were asking for trouble, and that's what you got. Frankly, I am amazed that you ever returned to Mars, and how you managed to make rubble of an orbit-ship with a crew of four hundred men trying to stop you is more than I can comprehend. But you did it. All right, fine. You were justified; they attacked you, held you prisoner, threatened you. Fine. They'd have cut your throats in another few hours, perhaps. Fine. I believe you. But there's one big question that you can't answer, and unless you can no court in the Solar System will listen to you."

"What question?" Tom said.

"The question of motives," the Major replied. "You had plenty of motive for doing what Tawney says you did. But what motive did Jupiter Equilateral have, if your story is true?"

"They wanted to get what Dad found, out in the Belt."

"Ah, yes, that mysterious bonanza that Roger Hunter found. I was afraid that was what you'd say. And it's the reason that Jupiter Equilateral is going to win this fight, and you're going to lose it."

"I don't think I understand," Tom said slowly.

"I mean that I'm going to have to testify against you," the Major said. "Because your father didn't find a thing in the Asteroid Belt, and I happen to know it."

* * * * *

"It's been a war," the Major said later, "a dirty vicious war with no holds barred and no quarter given. Not a shooting war, of course, nothing out in the open ... but a war just the same, with the highest stakes of any war in history.

"It didn't look like a war, at first," the Major went on. "Back when the colonies were being built, nobody really believed that anything of value would come of them ... scientific outposts, perhaps, places for laboratories and observatories, not much more. The colonies were placed under United Nations control. Nobody argued about it.

"And then things began to change. There was wealth out here ... and opportunities for power. With the overpopulation at home, Earth was looking more and more to Mars and Venus for a place to move ... not tiny colonies, but places for millions of people. And as Mars grew, Jupiter Equilateral grew."

"But it was just a mining company," Tom said.

"At first it was, but then its interests began to expand. The company accumulated wealth, unbelievable wealth, and it developed many friends. Very soon it had friends back on Earth fighting for it, and the United Nations found itself fighting to stay on Mars."

"I don't see why," Tom said. "The company already has half the mining claims in the Belt...."

"They aren't interested in the mining," the Major said. "They have a much longer-range goal than that. The men behind Jupiter Equilateral are looking ahead. They know that someday Earthmen are going to have to go to the stars for colonies ... it won't be a matter of choice after a while, they'll have to go. Well, Jupiter Equilateral's terms are very simple. They're perfectly willing to let the United Nations control things on Earth. All they want is control of everything else. Mars, if they can drive us out. Venus too, if it ever proves up for colonies. And if they can gain control of the ships that leave our Solar System for the stars, they can build an empire, and they know it."

They were silent for a moment. Then Johnny Coombs said, "Doesn't anybody on Earth know about this?"

"There are some who know ... but they don't see the danger. They think of Jupiter Equilateral as just another big company. So far U.N. control of Mars and Venus has held up, even though the pressure on the legislators back on Earth has been getting heavier and heavier. Jupiter Equilateral won the greatest fight in its history when they limited U.N. jurisdiction to Mars, and kept us out of the Belt. And now they hope to convince the lawmakers that we're incompetent to administer the Martian colonies and keep peace out here. If they succeed, we'll be called home in nothing flat; we've had to fight just to stay."

The Major spread his hands helplessly. "Like I said, it's been a war. Our only hope was to prove that the company was using piracy and murder to gain control of the asteroids. We had to find a way to smash the picture they've been painting of themselves back on Earth as a big, benevolent organization interested only in the best for Earth colonists on the planets. We had to expose them before they had the Earth in chains ... not now, maybe not even a century from now, but sometime, years from now, when the breakthrough to the stars comes and Earthmen discover that if they want to leave Earth they have to pay toll...."

"They could never do that!" Greg protested.

"They're doing it, son. And they're winning. We have been searching desperately for a way to fight back, and that was where your father came in. He could see the handwriting, he knew what was happening. That was why he broke with the company and tried to organize a competing force before it was too late. And it was why he died in the Belt. He knew I couldn't send an agent out there without unquestionable evidence of major crime of some sort or another. But a private citizen could go out there, and if he happened to be working with the U.N. hand in glove, nobody could do anything about it."

"Then Dad was a U.N. agent?"

"Oh, not officially. There's not a word in the records. If I were forced to testify under oath, I would have to deny any connection. But unofficially, he went out there to lay a trap."

The Major told them then. It had been an incredible risk that Roger Hunter had taken, but the decision had been his. The plan was simple: to involve Jupiter Equilateral in a case of claim-jumping and piracy that would hold up in court, pressed by a man who would not be intimidated and could not be bought out. Roger Hunter had made a trip to the Belt and come back with stories ... very carefully planted in just the right ears ... of a fabulous strike. He knew that Jupiter Equilateral had jumped a hundred rich claims in the past, forcing the independent miners to agree, frightening them into silence or disposing of them with "accidents."

But this was one claim they were not going to jump. The U.N. cooperated, helping him spread the story of his Big Strike until they were certain that Jupiter Equilateral would go for the bait. Then Roger Hunter had returned to the Belt, with a U.N. Patrol ship close by in case he needed help.

"We thought it would be enough," the Major said unhappily. "We were wrong, of course. At first nothing happened ... not a sign of a company ship, nothing. Your father contacted me finally. He was ready to give up. Somehow they must have learned that it was a trap. But they had just been careful, was all. They waited until our guard was down, and then moved in fast and hit hard."

He sank down in his seat behind the desk, regarding the Hunter twins sadly. "You know the rest. Perhaps you can see now why I tried to keep you from going out there. There was no proof to uncover and no bonanza lode for you to find. There never was a bonanza lode."

The twins looked at each other, and then at the Major. "Why didn't you tell us?" Greg said.

"Would you have listened? Would telling you have kept you from going out there? There was no point to telling you, I knew you would have to find out for yourselves, however painfully. But what I'm telling you now is the truth."

"As far as it goes," Tom Hunter said. "But if this is really the truth, there's one thing that doesn't fit into the picture."

Slowly Tom pulled the gun case from his pack and set it down on the Major's desk. "It doesn't explain what Dad was doing with this."



13. Pinpoint in Space

Tom knew now that it was the right thing to do. There was no question, after the Major's story, of what Dad had been doing out in the Belt at the time he had been killed. He had been doing a job that was more important to him than asteroid mining ... but he had found something more important than his own life, and had no chance to send word of what he had found back to Major Briarton on Mars. That had been the unforeseeable part of the trap.

But now, of course, the Major had to know.

The Mars Coordinator looked at the thing on the desk for a long moment before he reached out to touch it. The bright metal gleamed in the light, pale gray, lustrous. The Major picked it up, balanced it expertly in his hand, and a puzzled frown clouded his face. He examined it minutely.

"What is this thing?" he said.

"Suppose you tell us," Johnny Coombs said from across the room.

"It looks like a gun."

"That's what it is, all right."

"You've fired it?"

"Yes ... but I wouldn't fire it in here, if I were you," Johnny said. "You were wondering how we wrecked Tawney's orbit-ship so thoroughly. That's your answer right there." He told about the hole in the bulkhead, the way the ship's generators had melted like clay under the powerful blast of the weapon.

The Major could hardly control his excitement. "Where did you get it?" he asked, turning to Tom.

"From the space pack that you turned over to us. I didn't even look at it, until we needed a gun in a hurry. I just assumed it was Dad's revolver."

"And your father found it somewhere in the Belt," the Major said softly. He looked at the weapon again, shaking his head. "There isn't any such gun," he said finally. "These things you say it could do ... they would require energy enough to break down the cohesive forces of molecules. There isn't any way we know of to harness that kind of energy and channel it in a hand weapon. Nobody on Earth...."

He broke off and stared at them.

"That's right," Johnny said. "Nobody on Earth."

"You mean ... extraterrestrial?"

"There isn't any other answer," Johnny said. "Look at the thing, Major. Feel it. Does it feel like it was made for a human hand? It doesn't fit, it doesn't balance, you have to hold it with both hands to aim it...."

"But where did it come from?" the Major said. "We've never had visitors from another star system ... not in the course of recorded history. And we know that Earthmen are the only intelligent creatures in our Solar System."

"You mean that they're the only ones now," Tom said.

"Or any other time."

"We don't know that, for sure," Tom said.

"Look, we've explored Venus, Mars, all the major satellites. If there had ever been intelligence on any of them, we'd have known it."

"Maybe there was a planet that Earthmen haven't explored," Tom said. "Even Dad tried to tell us that. The quotation from Kepler that he scribbled down in his log ... 'Between Jupiter and Mars I will put a planet.' Why would Dad have written that? Unless he had suddenly discovered proof that there had been a planet there?"

"You mean this ... this gun," the Major said.

"And whatever else he found."

"But there's never been any proof of that theory ... not even a hint of proof."

"Maybe Dad found proof. There are hundreds of thousands of asteroid fragments out there in the Belt, and only a few hundred of them have ever been examined by men."

On the desk the strange weapon stared up at them. Evidence, mute evidence, and yet its very existence said more than a thousand words. It was there. It could not be denied.

And someone ... or something ... had made it.

Slowly the Major pulled himself to his feet. "It must have happened after his last message to me," he said. "It wasn't part of the scheme we had set up, but he made a strike just the same ... an archeological strike ... and this gun was part of it." He picked up the weapon, turned it over in his hand. "But it was days after that last message before his signal went off, and the Patrol ship moved in."

"It makes sense," Johnny Coombs said. "He found the gun, and something more."

"Like what?"

"I wouldn't even guess," Johnny said. "A planet with a race of creatures intelligent enough and advanced enough to make a weapon like that ... it could have been anything. But whatever it was, it must have scared him. He must have known that a company ship might turn up any minute ... so he hid whatever he had found, and all he dared to leave was a hint."

"And now it's vanished," the Major said. "The big flaw in the whole idea. My Patrol ship found nothing when it searched the region. You looked, and drew a blank. The company men scoured the area." He spread his hands helplessly. "You see, it just won't hold up, not a bit of it. Even with this gun, it won't hold up. We've got to find the answer."

"It's out there somewhere," Tom said doggedly. "It's got to be."

"But where? Don't you see that everything hangs on that one thing? If we could prove that your father found something just before he was killed, we could tear Jupiter Equilateral's case against you into shreds. We could charge them with piracy and murder, and make it stick. We could break their power once and for all ... but until we know what Roger Hunter found, we're helpless. They'll take you three to court, and I won't be able to stop them. And if you lose that case, it may mean the end of U.N. authority on Mars."

"Then there's just one thing to do," Johnny Coombs said. "We've got to find Roger Hunter's bonanza."

* * * * *

It was almost midnight when they left the Major's office, a gloomy trio, walking silently up the ramp to the Main Concourse, heading toward the living quarters.

They had been talking with the Major for hours, going over every facet of the story, wracking their brains for the answer ... but the answer had not come.

Roger Hunter had found something, and hidden it so well that three groups of searchers had failed to discover it. After seeing the gun, the Major was convinced that there had indeed been a discovery made. But whatever that discovery had been, it was gone as if it had never existed ... as if by some sort of magic it had been turned invisible, or conjured away to another part of the Solar System.

Finally, they had given up, at least for the moment. "It has to be there," the Major had said wearily. "It hasn't vanished, or miraculously ceased to exist. We know he was working on one claim, one asteroid. There were no other asteroids in the region ... and even the ones within suicide radius have been searched."

"It's there, all right," Tom said. "We're missing something, that's all."

"But what? Asteroids have stable orbits. Nobody can just make one disappear...."

They had called it a night, finally.

Once home they found more bad news waiting. There were two messages on the recordomat. The first was an official summons to appear before the United Nations Board of Investigations at 9:00 the following morning to answer "certain charges placed against the above named persons by the Governing Board of Jupiter Equilateral Mining Industries, and by one Merrill Tawney, plaintiff, representing said Governing Board." They listened to the plastic record twice. Then Greg tossed it down the waste chute.