Eight minutes left. He climbed out of the little grotto where he had concealed himself and moved toward the spot where he knew the airlock to the caverns underneath the planetoid's surface was hidden. Then again he concealed himself and waited, while he continued to breathe deeply of the highly oxygenated air in his suit. Five minutes before the ship landed, he swallowed eight ounces of the nutrient solution from the tank in the back of his helmet. The solution of amino acids, vitamins, and honey sugar also contained a small amount of stimulant of the dexedrine type and one percent ethanol. He waited for another minute for the solution to take effect, then he unholstered his gun. The supply ship wasn't a big one. He had known it wouldn't be. It was only a little larger than the one he had used to come out here. It dropped down to the surface of the small planetoid only ten meters from the hidden trapdoor that led to the airlock beneath the surface. Suddenly he could hear voices in the earphones of his helmet. _Lasser?_ _Yeah. It's me, Fritz. I got all the supplies and a nice package of good news._ The airlock trapdoor opened, and a spacesuited figure came out. _How about the deal?_ _That's the good news_, said the second suited figure as it came from the airlock of the grounded spaceboat. _Another five million._ The detective, hidden behind the nearby crag of rock, listened and watched for a minute or so while the two men began unloading cases of foodstuffs from the spaceboat. Then, satisfied that it was perfectly safe, he aimed his gun and shot twice in rapid succession. The range was almost point-blank, and there was, of course, no need to take either gravity or air resistance into account. The pellets of the shotgun-like charge that blasted out from the gun were small, needle-shaped, and massive. They were oriented point-forward by the magnetic field along the barrel of the weapon. Of the hundreds of charges fired, only a few penetrated the spacesuits of the targets, but those few were enough. The powerful drug in the needle-pointed head of each tiny crystal went directly into the bloodstream of each target. Each man felt an itching sensation. He had less than two seconds to think about it before unconsciousness overtook him and he slumped nervelessly. Gun in hand, the detective ran across the intervening space quickly, his body only a few degrees from the horizontal, and his toes paddling rapidly to propel him over the rough rock. He braked himself to a halt and slapped air patches over the areas where his charges had struck the men's suits, sealing the tiny air leaks, and, at the same time, driving more of the tiny needles into their skins. They would be out for a long time. Neither of them had yet fallen to the ground. That would take several minutes under this low gravity. He left them to drop and headed toward the open airlock.