The eight jetmen looked like lepers. Through lipless mouths they greeted the newcomers. Their voices were dry and whispering, as if their vocal cords had succumbed to the radiation too.

Conroy had been a scientist ... once. Conroy, more than any of the six convicts he had been shipped with, knew what sort of agonies lay ahead.

He turned. The door had irised shut behind him, erecting an invulnerable barrier between him and freedom.

He studied the door while the loathsome once-men greeted the men who would replace them at their deadly task. It looked fairly familiar; it was almost like—by space, it was!—an ultron-relay door.

A door Dave Conroy had helped to design, he and his partner Lloyd Regan, back before the terrible lab accident that had killed Regan and set Conroy to drinking.

Moving unobtrusively away from the group, he edged to the door. Yes—it was an ultronic door, he confirmed on close inspection. And that meant—

Hands that had once been those of a skilled engineer felt along the smooth metal for the emergency-hatch, found the microscopic depression built into the cupralloy for use in case the delicate ultronic mechanism of the door failed. His finger nestled in the slot for an instant—

And the door irised open.

"Hey!" he shouted, and jumped through. He heard the startled cries of the convicts.

"It's a trap," someone yelled. But another said, "Let's run for it"—and then the whole pack of them swarmed through the open door, Conroy in the lead.

They dashed back up the long corridor and Conroy opened the other door by the same process. Then they were out in the main room again.

Major Hawes gasped in astonishment as he saw the ragged army sweep toward him. He drew his blaster, but one of the half-skeletonized veteran jetmen stumbled forward and took the bolt in his stomach, then kept going and wrapped decaying arms around the Major's throat.

Conroy's fist collided with the mouth of a surprised Space-Station guard; his knuckles felt a sharp stab of pain, and teeth crumbled. Dave came up with a staggering blow to the guard's midsection and he fell.

That left two more to take care of. The lightning assault was still only seconds old. One of the guards was fingering the 

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