The girl allowed her face to relax. She said in a softer voice, "Lie down. The Nova's take-off is pretty rugged. Five G's." The metal door clanged shut. Gavin heard a bolt snick into place. Blackness, utter impenetrable blackness engulfed him. He spent precious minutes searching for the light switch, as the roar of the jets whined up an ascending scale. With a grunt of satisfaction, he found them, snapped them on. The cabin flooded with brilliance. The body of Trev, the Martian was stretched stark and cold on the metal deck! Gavin bent shakily over the broker of slaves and scientific secrets. Trev's black eyes were open, glassy. A thin three cornered sliver of metal protruded from his throat. The Martian would never steal the Nova's space drive now. He had been shot with a poisoned dart. Suddenly, a tremendous weight fell on Gavin's shoulders. He was squashed flat to the deck beside the dead Martian, pinned there. The breath was crushed from his chest, and he struggled wildly to inflate his lungs. The Nova, he realized in desperation, was off! Gavin managed to roll to his belly, push himself to hands and knees. The pressure didn't relax. He crawled to a corner, got his legs braced against a stanchion. If the strange ship above the clouds should prove unfriendly, the Nova would be bucking like a crazed steer in her efforts to dodge. Anyone caught unprepared would be flipped from bulkhead to bulkhead until he was a bundle of splintered bones. The acceleration dragged at Gavin's lean flesh. He looked ten years older in the harsh bright light. Sweat burst from his pores; his eye-lids drooped; his mouth sagged. Then the whine of the jets ceased. The terrific acceleration relaxed. Gavin felt like a toy balloon. Consternation widened his pale blue eyes. He gripped himself for the buffeting he was almost sure would follow. In the silence a wild clamor broke out from stem to stern. The general alarm! Gavin tensed. He could feel the pulse drumming in his temples. Then it came. The jets burst into a full throated roar. The Nova lurched crazily to the starboard and then swept upward at a tangent. Again the Nova bucked, this time to port. A sickening circular movement took possession of his prison. The ship, he realized, must be above the clouds in the upper stratosphere and climbing higher in tight spirals. Suddenly the Nova gave an uncontrolled lurch. A faint far away explosion reached his ears. They were being fired at! That was an atomic shell bursting off the starboard bow. Sweat coursed down Gavin's cheeks. Were they going to let him die in the locked cabin like a trapped rat? The crew could escape in space tenders, if the Nova were hit. Another shell burst closer, throwing the gigantic ship sideways as a hurricane tosses a chip. Something burst in Gavin's brain. He came to his senses, realized he was hammering in berserk terror on the unyielding metal door. His knuckles were streaming blood.