"You got me!" I shrugged hopelessly.

"However, since we have nothing else to go on but the locale from which
the children vanished, my suggestion would be to send you there."

"Mars, you mean," I said.

"No, to the spaceship _Phobos II_. The one they were returning to Earth
in when they disappeared."

"They disappeared from a spaceship? While in space?"

Baxter nodded.

"But that's impossible," I said, shaking my head against this
disconcerting thought.

"Yes," said Baxter. "That's what bothers me."

_Phobos II_, for obvious reasons, was berthed in a Top Security
spaceport. Even so, they'd shuttled it into a hangar, safe from the
eyes of even their own men, and as a final touch had hidden the ship's
nameplate beneath magnetic repair-plates.

I had a metal disk--bronze and red, the Security colors--insigniaed
by Baxter and counterembossed with the President's special device, a
small globe surmounted by clasping hands. It gave me authority to do
anything. With such an identification disc, I could go to Times Square
and start machine gunning the passers-by, and not one of New York's
finest would raise a hand to stop me.

And, snugly enholstered, I carried a collapser, the restricted weapon
given only to Security Agents, so deadly was its molecule-disrupting
beam. Baxter had spent a tremulous hour showing me how to use the
weapon, and especially how to turn the beam off. I'd finally gotten the
hang of it, though not before half his kidney-shaped desk had flashed
into nothingness, along with a good-sized swath of carpeting and six
inches of concrete floor.

His parting injunction had been. "Be careful, Delvin, huh?"

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