Asteroid H277--Plus By HARRY WALTON It was a pretty web that Akars spun aboard the Sun-freighter _Cinnabar_.... Mass murder and piracy! But he wasn't clever enough to allow for the innocent-sounding asteroid charted as "H277--Plus." [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Jon Akars, petty officer of the Sun Line freighter _Cinnabar_, backed away from the jimmied manifold of the air circulators and hastily felt for the emergency mask at his belt. Any moment now the Venusian _kui-knor_ he had filched from the ship's medicine cabinet and dropped into the circulators would take effect. Without warning men would drop at their posts, apparently insensible, rigid of muscle, eyes staring fixedly. Actually, they would be keenly aware of everything about them, their senses sharpened rather than dulled by the drug. But it was no part of Akars' plans to be one of them. He strapped on the mask, and, at the sound of approaching footsteps, shrank back into the shadows of the machines. An officer peered into the circulator chamber for an instant, then marched on down the corridor. Akars chuckled. Box Jordan _was_ part of his plan; in a way, he had a star role. But not an enviable one. Nor, to be sure, were the remainder of the _Cinnabar's_ crew going to be particularly lucky. The luck of the scheme was reserved for Akars himself, and it involved four kilos of precious Urulium which Box Jordan had unearthed during an emergency landing on an unexplored planetoid. Jordan had been fool enough to turn the stuff over as a ship's prize, to be equally divided. But with the metal on board, it was inevitable that a smarter man would see and grasp the chance that was offered. Akars was that man. He waited until the circulation meters told him that the _kui-knor_ had been diffused through every cubic foot of air in the ship, then softly trod the steelene-walled corridor back to the navigating compartment. The sight there was a gruesome one. Captain Cardigan was slumped over the chart table, glassy-eyed, to all appearance dead. But he wasn't dead, Akars knew. The captain and the chief petty officer and the second navigator and the supercargo--all sprawled in grotesque attitudes about the compartment, all staring vacantly into space, were in the grip of an artificially induced coma.