The two patrol rockets were streaking up after his commandeered ship. Fairy-like in their pastel shades, with the delicate tracery of girders over their fighting noses, they nevertheless represented grim menace to Duane! He swore under his breath. The _Cameroon_, huge and lumbering, was helpless as a sitting bird before those lithe hawks of prey. If only he knew which side the ships were on. If only he knew--anything! He couldn't afford to take a chance. "Stand back!" he ordered the captain. The man in blue gave ground before him, staring wonderingly as Duane advanced. Duane took a quick look at the control set-up, tried to remember how to work it. It was so tantalizingly close to his memory! He cursed again; then stabbed down on a dozen keys at random, heeled the main control down, jumped back, even as the ship careened madly about in its flight, and blasted the delicate controls to shattered ashes with a bolt from his heat gun. Now the ship was crippled, for the time being at least. Short of a nigh-impossible boarding in space, the two patrol cruisers could do nothing with it till the controls were repaired. The _Cameroon_, and its cargo of political dynamite, would circle through space for hours or days. It wasn't much--but it was the best he could do. At least it would give him time to think things over. No. He heard the voices of the men in the corridor again, tumbled about by the abrupt course change--luckily, it had been only a mild thing compared to the one that had killed Stevens and caused his own present dilemma--but regaining their feet and coming on. And one of the voices, loud and harsh, was Andrias! Somehow, before the ports closed, he'd managed to board the _Cameroon_! * * * * * Duane stood erect, whirled to face the door. The captain stood by it. Duane thrust his heat gun at him. "The door!" he commanded. "Lock it!" Urged by the menace of the heat gun, the captain hurriedly put out a hand to the lock of the door-- And jerked it back, nursing smashed knuckles, as Andrias and four men burst in, hurling the door open before them. They came to a sliding, tumbling halt, though, as they faced grim Duane and his ready heat pistol. "Hold it!" he ordered. "That's right.... Stay that way while I figure things out. The first man that moves, dies for it." Dark blood flooded into Andrias' face, but he said no word, only stood there glaring hatred. The smear of crimson had been brushed from his face, but his nose was still awry and a huge purplish bruise was spreading over it and across one cheek. The three men with him were guards. All were armed--the police with hand weapons as lethal as Duane's own, Andrias with an old-style projective-type weapon--an ancient pistol, snatched from some bewildered spaceman as they burst into the _Cameroon_.