"Ah, Ah!" cautioned Chavez, "Remember all those beautiful silver stripes."

"Well, damn the lot of you. I just hope we get the Darkside back to Luna Base and your little...." He made an angry parody of Chavez's romantic gesture.

"We'll get back, I think, Mr. Scott," said a casual voice from the Valve. The Commodore was standing in the arch, outlined against the ramp light. He stepped into Control and took a seat beside Chavez at the panels.

Scott and Chavez maintained an embarrassed silence. Hartnett looked up to study the now receding solar disk through the tinted visiplate. The Flotilla was now heading once again for deep space.

It was a few moments before Hartnett spoke. When he did, it was a command directed at Scott.

"Mr. Scott, the Flotilla will land for certain necessary readjustments on Hyperion. See that the other vessels are properly notified." Then he rose and left the Control.

Scott dropped unhappily into a chair. He looked at Chavez. "Well, Mr. Chavez. How do you think you will enjoy command of the Darkside?"

Chavez laid a friendly hand on his commander's sleeve. "I don't think he'd take your ship from you just because...."

"Skip it, Chav!" snapped Scott and he left the Control in peevish silence.

Sixty hours later Blue Three lay grounded in a jagged little valley on airless Hyperion. Spacesuited figures swarmed about the clustered ships transferring personnel from the Artemis to the other ships, and rigging special television, remote control, and other apparatus in the Artemis.

Hartnett stood beneath the Darkside's ventral valve on the metallic soil of the little moon with Chavez and Orsov watching the progress of the work. Lieutenant Morrow of the Lysander and Lieutenant Griggs of the Argus joined them and stood in silence while the last of the Artemis' personnel was transferred into the Darkside. Tom Drew, the commander of the Artemis stood sadly apart watching the spacemen make a ghost ship of his command.

On the eastern horizon, Saturn was rising into a black sky studded with points of fiery brilliance. Quickly the ringed planet climbed into the sky and flooded the tortured landscape of Hyperion with light. The men at the Darkside's valve stood watching the show of celestial grandeur in awe. Orsov, for all his 

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