spacemen consider themselves unofficial deputies of the Patrol when the occasion arises, and it seems to me that even a civilian might have kept his mouth shut about that slug. As for their shooting us out of the sky, we would have something to say about that. We know how to operate against land batteries."

"I don't doubt that," I assured him. "But I think you'll agree that a ship in space with no drive is an easier set-up."

"No drive? What do you mean?"

"Just that. Stony and his boys are sitting out in space with a blown tube waiting for you to come along and pick them up. If you want to know exactly where, give these figures to your navigator and let him finish them on the computer. I've got a fix on them for every ten minutes from blastoff to the time their main drive tube blew four hours and forty-three minutes later."

"How do you know their tube blew? I never heard of such a thing."

"Brother, I did! And if you don't know how fast a Group IV slug can chew the guts out of a graphite liner, just ask me. But those lads didn't know. When they left Earth at the end of the Polar War, Group IV fissionables weren't heard of, nor tungsil. When I gave them the Group IV slug that the ground crew gave me by mistake on Phobos, they didn't know the difference."

I looked at Betty, and so help me, she was crying again.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I couldn't tell you what the score was before without tipping them off."

She came over and took hold of my hand. She didn't say anything, but then she didn't need to.

Allison was pushing buttons like mad, and the bridge began to look like a sub-sea train at rush hour. When the navigator came in the CO handed him my notes.

"Figure an interception orbit from these observations. Blastoff in twenty minutes.

"Here, sergeant, take a detail and lay out a signal panel for the Day Expedition when they return, and this message to tell them what happened and where we've gone. Quigley! (this was the exec, I gathered) all hands to space stations—blastoff at once.

"Denby, I think you and Miss Day had better come along with us. I imagine you've both had enough of bulgers for a while, and I think you might like to be in on the end of this. Right?"

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