"A real efficient type, Charley, old pal." I looked about me wondering if we weren't just imagining everything. And if the Ul disaster weren't enough reason for this trip. "How about Deborah?"

"If we had a game of stud king," Charley said, fishing out a token, "and Debby joined us, we could have a lot of conversation between hands."

"Heads," I said clearly.

"Son of a space cook," he said loudly. "You deal."

I glanced at Vechi casually, as though satisfying myself that he didn't want to be disturbed. He was looking at us over his book. He smiled, I thought, in a superior way.

"Want to lose some money?" I called to Deborah.

"I've got some change," she said, sitting up.

And so we commenced to play stud king on a cleared-off space on the floor. Between the laughs we got in a lot of conversation.

We figured we had time. The trip to Ul took four hours and we were only half-way there. If Vechi was up to something it would probably involve a "forced" landing somewhere just outside of Ul, away from the main rocket fleet. After all, what he wanted was in Ul.

If the pilots and Raeburn were in on the deal with him—and they had to be—we were badly outnumbered. Our only chance was not in waiting but in somehow getting control of the Starfish while it was still aloft. And of contacting the lead ship for help.

Deborah was scared. And I was glad she was scared. And I was glad she didn't turn up a single, bright idea for our salvation. Except that she would have to tell Madame Pundra about this development.

It was then that we told Charley about our stowaway. It was to his credit that his expression remained unchanged. And indicative of something that his only excitement was at the possibility of finally seeing a Martian woman.

It may have seemed very little to go on, our conviction that Vechi was masterminding a coup. But it's the little things that make you suspicious. The R.A. is made up of casual characters. They like to talk, gripe about no smoking in the control room, come back to sniff out a drink or a game of stud king, maybe an off-color story. There seems to be a kind of conspiracy to get the rockets to fly themselves while the pilots visit aft—or so it seems to the passengers.

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