the scene of the crime and was proved mistaken, could not be located for the trial. If Miss Adison can throw any light on the identity of her father's murderess, it is now inconsequential for the quick sword of justice—

Ricker crumpled the slip of paper, hurled it across his narrow cell. Why hadn't he killed her when he had the chance. She was a killer, heartless, cruel as a lynx—and doubly dangerous because she possessed the claws of woman. Her beauty was a mask of murder; the charm of her eyes—well, he'd fallen into them and she'd taken a gun away from him like a toy from a child.

His black thoughts returned to the fullness of his plight. Obviously, Molly Borden had pretended to burn the plans to keep the police off the trail of her henchmen. Then the law had virtually delivered her to their door-step again. Blind fools! He'd written story after story doubting those ashes they found in her stateroom. On the evidence of a few half-burned symbols and a charred notebook cover, the law had made a mistake endangering the very universe!

He was as blind as the police. At least he had expected something—but now here he was trapped like a rabbit in a box. With a plot forming around him that could shake worlds—with a story any telenewsman would give his typewriter-fingers for!

Vanger hadn't lied. His heat-gunned ships could stop any army. And here, beneath the lying ice-wastes of Neptune, such planes were being made like bubbles....

Ricker combed desperate fingers through his unruly hair, got up and paced the cramped floor. What was their plan? To attack Earth—conquer Mars, Venus, Mercury—all the colonies? No! It was unimaginable! But this unknown cave, those ships out there—?

He wondered if his attempted message had gotten through to the Patrol. But he hadn't had time to say he was beneath the location he'd given. They wouldn't find a trace up there on the ice and how could they guess what lay under a hundred miles of frozen gas?

He heard a key clink in the lock of his cell door. It opened to Hines' tank-like figure. He had his gun ready, apparently wasn't taking any chances since the incident of the radio building.

"Let's go, telenewsman," he ordered Ricker outside. Ricker walked out the door without a word.

Hines motioned him to go ahead, directed him out into the noisy street. The hum of machinery was deafening and in the 

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