MacIlheny turned to Major Hamacher. "Be ready to take that bird up as soon as we get orbital readings and bearings. There's something screwy as hell going on up there, and I want to find out what it is! Those jets shouldn't be working at all. What could have turned them on at exactly the right moment?" He was talking more to himself than to the major, who was busily making last-minute adjustments on the instruments. The computations on the new orbit came in, were run through the computers, and then fed into the autopilot section of the remote controls for the RJ-37. "Any time you're ready, Major," MacIlheny said. The major adjusted his controls, threw a switch, and pressed a stud. Over two thousand miles away, in White Sands Spaceport, New Mexico, the atomic-powered, fully armed RJ-37 squirted a tongue of white-hot flame out of her rocket motors, climbed into the air, and launched herself toward space. Over Major Hamacher's shoulder, MacIlheny and Blake watched the screen that showed the scene from the forward port of the space rocket. For a while, there was nothing to see. As the ship gained altitude, it burst through a layer of low-hanging clouds, then there was nothing but the blue sky overhead. Gradually, as the air thinned, the sky became darker, more purplish. Stars began to appear, and finally the ship was in the blackness of space. The major's hands glided smoothly over the controls, guiding the ship along its precalculated orbit, slowly overtaking the runaway satellite. At first there was nothing to see--only the distant, fixed stars, glittering like tiny shards of diamond against a spread of blackest velvet. Then it became apparent that one of the shards was moving with relationship to the others. It became brighter, bigger. Then it was no longer a point of light, but a globe of metal floating in the infinite darkness of space. Under the careful manipulation of Major Hamacher, the remote-controlled RJ-37 moved cautiously up to Satellite Number Four. As the details of the globe came into focus, every man in the room gasped involuntarily. "What the hell is _that_?" asked Blake. No one answered. It was obvious to everyone there that whatever it was that had crashed into Number Four and driven it off course, it was most certainly _not_ a meteorite. * * * * * At last, MacIlheny said: "I'll be willing to bet my last dollar that that's a spaceship of some kind." From a gaping hole in the side of the satellite, there protruded a long, cigar-shaped shaft of bluish metal. It looked almost as though someone had shoved a fat blue cigar halfway into a silver tennis ball. Major Hamacher said softly: "I wonder what kind of metal that ship is made of?" "Yeah," said MacIlheny, "I wonder."