The captain opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it shut. He touched the stud of a communications set, said into it, "Close ports. Snap to it. Engine room--up rockets in ten seconds. All crew--stand by for lift!" The ship's own take-off siren howled shrilly, drowning out the angry voices from below. Peter felt the whine of the electrics that dogged shut the heavy pressure doors. He stepped to the pilot's chair, slid into it, buckled the compression straps around him. The instruments--he recognized them all, knew how to use them! Had he been a rocket pilot before his mind had blanked--before embarking on the more lucrative profession of gun smuggler? He wondered.... But it was the captain who took the ship off. "Ten seconds," Peter said. "Get moving!" The captain hesitated the barest fraction, but his eyes were on the heat gun and he knew that Duane was capable of using it. "The men--" he said. "If they're underneath when the jets go, they'll burn!" "That's the chance they take," said Duane. "They heard the siren!" The captain turned his head quickly, and his fingers flashed out. He was in his own acceleration seat too, laced down by heavy canvas webbing. His hands reached out to the controls before him, and his fingers took on a life of their own as they wove dexterously across the keys, setting up fire-patterns, charting a course of take-off. Then the heel of his hand settled on the firing stop.... * * * * * The acceleration was worse than Peter's clouded mind had expected, but no more than he could stand. In his frame of mind, he could stand almost anything, he thought--short of instant annihilation! The thin air of Callisto howled past them, forming a high obligato to the thunder of the jets. Then the air-howl faded sharply to silence, and the booming of the rockets became less a thing of sound than a rumble in the framework of the _Cameroon_. They were in space. [Illustration: _The Cameroon blasted from its cradle, racing Andrias' ships for open space._] The captain's foot kicked the pedal that shut off the over-drive jets, reducing the thrust to a mere one-gravity acceleration. He turned to Duane. "What now?" he asked. Duane, busy unstrapping himself from the restraining belts, shook his head without answering. What now? "_A damn good question!_" he thought. The captain, with the ease of long practice, was already out of his own pressure straps. He stood there by his chair, watching Duane closely. But the gun was still in Duane's hand, despite his preoccupation. Duane cocked an ear as he threw off the last strap. Did he hear voices in the corridor, a distance away but coming. The captain, looking out the port with considerable interest, interrupted his train of thought. "What," he asked, "for instance, are you going to do about--those?" His arm was outstretched, pointing outward and down. Duane looked in that direction--