in the control room. The meteor couldn't have hit very hard—they would have been killed without knowing it. A mere graze!

He reached out fearfully and cut off the blazing rockets. The vision plates were blackened—no way of knowing which way they were going.

That was his first job, then—to unshutter the vision plates. He reviewed his knowledge of the mechanism. Evidently the master switch that controlled them all had been short-circuited. The switch was in the very tail of the ship. He crawled through the hold and into the tiny compartment in the tail.

His pocket flash picked out the switch, and he made with the screw driver. A few seconds later he looked proudly through the opened plate, feeling like a master mechanic.

But he didn't feel so happy when he saw a swifter-moving point of light in the star-filled sky.

A spaceship was closing in on the Chicago. And goose pimples rose on his arms when he recognized it as the police ship of Commander Lansfer.

He had to get back to the control room.

The police ship was coming in at a half mile a second, relative to them. What both ships were doing relative to the system he didn't know, or care. On his hands and knees in the close cubby, he scrambled around to get back to the control room. But already it was too late.

Invisible beams of magnetic force leaped into life between the two vessels, as the law ship clamped down with its Duvals. Barnard was pitched heavily forward as the beams seized the Chicago. His head crashed into something hard, and he fell into a relaxed bundle.

V

It was cold, and he was beating his way out of a frozen death. He fought his way up from the floor, a sluggish chill in the marrow of his bones. Frigid ... and he was sinking back.

Remembrance shocked him into wakefulness. He stared from the port before his face. The police ship was there, clamped by invisible forces to the Chicago. Dully, he watched the fore rockets blasting for deceleration.

Deceleration—?

That brought him to frantic life. Were they nearing Pluto? How long had he been out? And—why was it so cold?

His teeth and knees still chattering, he wriggled down the 

 Prev. P 19/28 next