chronometer, she realized that in a few minutes Saul would make contact with the Maid.

She clicked off the power in her Helmet. She wanted no Varra spying on her now.

The radio operator did not turn. He had not seen her or heard her silent approach. Andrea’s hand poised over an intricate array of wires and tore the cables free.

A lance of cold fire plunged into her brain. It was too quick for pain. Her terrified thought, The Plutonians! was cut off instantly. Her mind drowned, as in dark water, chill and horrible.

The radio operator whirled, startled, at the thud of Andrea’s falling body.

CHAPTER THREE

Destination—Death!

“CQX! CQX! Calling Maid of Mercury!”

Saul Duncan looked up from the mike. “No answer. Their radio’s dead.”

“Your wife did her job,” Olcott grunted, fingering his mustache. He had regained his usual impassivity, though Hartman, in the background, had not. The scientist, without his daily quart of khlar, was a nervous wreck, puffing cigarette after cigarette in a vain attempt to calm himself.

“There she is.” Duncan nodded at the visiplate, where the bulk of the Maid lay, occulting stars. “We’ll use visual signals. First, though, we’ll have to—”

His fingers moved swiftly. A four-inch blaster cannon sent its bolt of electronic energy ravening through space, across the Maid’s bow. Lights on the cruiser’s hull blinked into rainbow colors.

Paralleling the Maid, steadily drawing closer, the smaller ship kept on its course.

Duncan said, “They noticed that. They’ll be watching the visiplate—”

“What are you telling them?”

“To send over the radium, or we’ll blast ’em to hell.”

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