"Will you tell Commissioner Merrill it's urgent that I see him. It's about his daughter. Some drunk in the Tourist Lounge tried to attack her, and—"

"Of course, sir." The guard turned to press the relay that would open the door, and Conroy clubbed down on the back of his neck with the side of a fist.

The man shuddered under the blow, began to reach for his blaster, and Conroy hit him again. He fell heavily.

Thoughtfully, Conroy extracted the blaster from the guard's holster, then reached up and slid his hand over the wall, searching for the ultronic relay that he himself had designed so long ago. The door irised open.

Conroy stepped inside. No one was visible in the outer room; no sound was heard except the continual chattering of the cybernetic governors that operated the satellite. He let the door close and activated the lock. No one would get in until he was ready to let them in, now; it was a circuit known only to the builders of the station and the high officers.

The first thing was to find Merrill, and anyone else who might be in the control center. Conroy knew what he had to do: take charge of the control center, broadcast his terms to the Space-Station and to Earth, and wait for them to agree to release him. If they called his bluff—

He shivered. No, they'd never do that. If he threatened to destroy the Station they'd grant him freedom without hesitation. In a situation like that, you don't try to call a madman's bluff.

Conroy slid open the door that led to the inner room that was the nerve center of the giant station. He looked in—and gasped.

Commandant Naylor and several other men in high-rank uniforms lay bound in one corner of the cabin. And at the controls of the Station was Commissioner Merrill.

He seemed to be chuckling to himself. Conroy paused by the door and watched, horror-stricken.

Merrill had activated the long-dormant bombay units, and, according to the pattern on the radar screen above his head, he had swung a fusion-bomb onto the hoists.

The bombs were kept at the Station—in case. They were strictly top-secret, stored on the satellite in the event that they would be needed in a war. Conroy knew about them only because he had seen the specifications for the satellite before it had been built; Merrill, as 

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