Horitz repeated his message, and added, "I'm bringing the body down to Thomasson's stateroom. Get the ship's doctor and meet me there."

Two figures exploded out of the levitor well a dozen yards away; one bulky and grey-haired, the other lean and young. They ran up to Horitz, panting. The bulky one, Walsh, was still swearing.

"I watched him like a baby," he protested. "He told me he was going to get up at nine this morning, so I set my watch for eight. Why the howling hell did he—"

"Save it," said Horitz. "He did. I'll take his head, Sommers, you take his feet. Walsh, think you can carry Oscar?"

"Listen, Phil," said Sommers abruptly, "are the Equations gone?"

"Yes," Horitz told him. "They're gone."

Walsh grunted and, stooping, wrapped his arms around the black thing. He lifted it without apparent effort. The stumpy tendrils waved down toward him, then stood upright again, ignoring him. The other two picked up the body of Thomasson, and all three walked back to the levitor well from which they had come.

Captain Tooker and the medical officer, Dr. Evans, met them at the door of the dead man's stateroom. Tooker was boiling over. "Do you call yourselves Security agents?" he shouted. "Three of you, to protect one man, and you couldn't do it. I'll raise hell about this, Horitz, see if I don't."

Horitz and Sommers put the body down on the bed, and Dr. Evans fell quietly to examining it. "We'll find the killer," said Horitz grimly, "or else any hell you can raise will be a sneeze in a gale of wind. You don't know the half of this yet."

"I know that a man has been murdered on my ship," said Tooker.

"A man!" said Sommers, staring at him. "A whole planet may have been murdered, unless we get the Equations back."

"What equations?" said Tooker. "What the devil are you talking about?"

"The Thomasson Equations," said Sommers, "are the answer to the problem of faster-than-light space travel. Prof. Thomasson derived them from observations he made on the space shell this thing—" he gestured at Oscar—"landed on Pluto in, last year."

Captain Tooker glanced at Oscar with evident dislike. "Well," he said, "what are you going to do about it?"

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