He flung the little tender back through space toward the glowing debris which now milled about itself, spinning about a common center. A few fragments had ripped free from the gravitational whirlpool of the rest. He dodged a piece half as large as the life ship itself. Red hot still, it swept past the port, more like a blazing meteor than anything, made by man. Past other wreckage he swept, evidence of the terrific energy of spontaneously exploded fuel--gruesome human debris as well as that of the _Cinnabar_ itself. The temperature within the tender climbed slowly as it absorbed heat from glowing fragments outside. Uneasily he checked his own fuel refrigerator, turned thermostatic controls to maintain a lower temperature. Something swept into his field of vision with startling speed. He ripped the helm over, swearing in sudden panic. The tender swerved, but not sharply enough. A grating shock, a metallic crash, told that the vessel had been hit. The jar of the concussion almost threw him from the control seat. His temples throbbing madly, Akars waited for the dread hiss of escaping air, the drop in pressure which his ear drums would quickly detect. The tender was small; a gash in the hull plates would empty it of air rapidly. But the pressure remained normal, and he relaxed at last, certain that the collision had done no more than dent the hull plates. He forgot the incident upon spying what had been the strong room door. Cautiously he worked the tender alongside it, scanning nearby debris closely. It took him fifteen minutes to find the thick-walled copper casket containing the treasure, scarred by impact, half fused by the terrific heat even though it had been protected by the walls of the strong room from the brunt of it. He knew that its precious contents could have suffered no harm, and carefully manipulated the ship's grappling mechanism until the casket was safely inside the tender's loading port. He swung the life ship about and drove for clear space. So easy it had been! A few minutes of effort had won him ten times as much as other men earned during a lifetime of hard, dangerous work in the space-lanes. Lucky he wasn't squeamish by nature. This way he was safe. Every witness against him was dead. His own word would be taken as gospel truth. Already he had planned every detail of the story--how he had been on routine inspection of the tender when the explosion started forward, in the fuel tanks. How the life ship, with him aboard, had been blown free by the blast--how he had barely managed to close the port in time to escape suffocation--how from the tender he had witnessed the destruction of the _Cinnabar_, and how--a touching detail this--he had cruised back into the wreckage in search of survivors, but found none. He would not try to explain the explosion. The lethally dangerous nature of the fuel would answer all doubts. Nobody could suspect him.