"All right, all right," Samson growled irritably. "If we're going, let's go." "Patience, friend," the blond Captain admonished. "Right this way now, that's right, through the airlock, take your seats as I call them off. Dunlop, one; Samson, two; Austen, three...." Arthur filed silently into the spaceship, Samson and Julie and the others behind him. He took a seat and looked around. He cried out at what he saw, and then Samson's hands were upon his neck, squeezing with the fury of a man possessed by one thought. He felt his breath being cut off, the room darken. They fell into the aisle. He could hear shouts of vengeance around him, and he thought he heard Julie's frantic voice telling them to stop. Julie-- The airlock clanged with awful finality, and there was a sickening rush as the spaceship darted aloft. Uncushioned bodies flew, and Arthur felt the pressure on his throat ease. He blinked open his eyes, forced himself erect. The blond Captain was bending over him. "You okay?" "Still alive, George," he said, massaging his throat, "but I think we'd better tell them before I need a new head." "George?" Julie said, puzzled. "You two know each other?" "We were in the war together," the Captain said. Arthur rose unsteadily. "I'd like you people to meet my best friend, George Keating." "But--" "We decided some time ago that Earth is no place for an underground movement," Arthur said. "There's too much secrecy, too much danger involved in the slightest movement away from the established pattern. People are too involved with the Super State idea and the dangers to their own particular skins." Like my wife, Helen, he thought to himself. "There's one place, though," George Keating supplied, "where the inhabitants are in perfect accord with overthrowing the government as it now exists." "Where?" Samson asked skeptically. "Where else," Arthur told him, smiling, "but the Moon, on the prison colony where people were sent because they didn't like the way things were turning out politically and otherwise on Earth. It was a comparatively simple matter to replace the guards with our own group." "Then," Julie exclaimed, "then you were in on this all the time. It was part of a plan." Arthur nodded. "All except Helen's turning me in, which was unexpected but just as well I suppose. We're almost ready for the ultimatum, and we wanted this group to aid us, which is why I betrayed you. We could have whisked you away secretly, but there was greater danger in that and the disappearance of an individual, much less a group, couldn't go unnoticed in that society. Besides, this way they'll be more complacent." "As I told that guard," Keating added, "we've still got a lot of work to do, chiefly on the other side of the Moon where Earth can't see--put the finishing touches on spaceships we've been building, assemble the weapons and the guided missiles. A lot of work. We may not have to use them--I hope we don't--but they'll be ready, just in case."