off for a while."

Alice seemed to draw confidence from her husband's words. She smiled a bit wanly. "Okay, Bert," she said. "This is also for the folks who have gone nuts, or have just gotten terribly homesick from seeing too much black sky of space for too long. Let's go!"

They strapped themselves to the seats in the Prometheus' control room. Bert depressed the throttle. Rocket jets flamed. The rebuilt freighter lifted heavily and gained momentum toward a speed of miles per second. In the rear-vision screen the Kraskows saw two police spaceboats flashing the blue signal for them to land.

Bert set the Prometheus in an orbit around Titan, about a thousand miles above the bleak and dried out surface of this Saturnian satellite. Thus the ship became a little moon of a moon.

Alice was shouting into the mike of the large radio transmitter: "Colonists at Camp Titan! Enter your ship! Blast into space for safety! We are about to use the Big Pill! Colonists at Camp Titan! Blast for safety!... Police boats, give us room! Don't interfere!..."

This was the start of wild drama. When Alice switched from transmission to reception, the calls from the patrol craft were stern: "Freighter Prometheus, this is the Space Patrol. Proceed to a landing or we blast."

But these calls still seemed secondary, compared to other words also coming from the receiver, like another, overlapping radio program. It was Trenton Lauren's scared voice that spoke:

"Space Colonists' Supply, Incorporated, calling deep-space units of patrol! Send more help to Titan! Maniac named Kraskow amuck with freighter Prometheus, known to contain huge bomb! Destroy on sight: Bomb supposed to be invention of group headed by one, Emil Kramer, renegade scientist believed to have a grudge against S. C. S. Claims for invention wholly extravagant and unbased. Hurry, deep-space units of Patrol. More help! Or all of Titan will be flooded with heat and deadly radioactivity! Hurry.... Hurry.... Hurry...."

Just then the Prometheus rocked from the impact of a blaster-beam; and though the Kraskows could not see the effect of the weapon, they knew that there were glowing spots on their ship's tough hull. If the Patrol boats could bear down with their beams on a particular area for a few seconds, a mighty episode could end violently before it had a chance to start.

Alice's small hands were on the complicated aiming and firing mechanism 

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