There was no knowing how soon before that twenty-two hours he would be meeting the Comrades. Nor was there any way of knowing if McGinty intended to break his orbit when he neared the Moon and head on out into Space. That way he'd end up a derelict with his fuel exhausted, smothered when his air was used up, and lost forever. Something began picking at the back of my mind, but I didn't have time to play with it. With the extra rocket motor Knight had had jury-rigged to the stern of our L-8, there was a chance we could overtake McGinty an hour or so before he entered a lunar orbit, if that's what he was going to do. And if we'd been able to crowd on enough fuel. Or, if he just kept on going, we were certain to overhaul him--and that was why neither of those two angles made much sense. From a practical point of view, anyway. "It's a rendezvous set-up for certain," Knight said. He was strapped in the bow astrodome seat, working with the L-8's two-inch refractor. Earth and our satellite rolled some twenty hours and two hundred twenty thousand miles behind us; we were tired, we were apprehensive and edgy. We'd been power-on all the way instead of blasting and drifting. But so had McGinty. Knight had had McGinty's L-8 in his lenses almost from the hour we'd blasted out. There were just three of us--myself, Knight and Loftus. I'd left Haliburton behind as second-in-command and to take care of Kolomar when he came up, as he had. Right now, he was only a couple of hours behind us in the L-8 I'd ordered Haliburton to have ready and waiting for him. There hadn't been anything else from McGinty. Not a flicker. And not a word either from the Comrades. Things should've been crackling about now. Their satellite had just rounded Earth's illumination an hour or so before, and they should be throwing cover-up messages at us by the barrel, wanting to know what was the meaning of an uncleared orbital flight, and why hadn't they been notified. But not a word. At least not that Loftus had picked up on our own H-F. Maybe they were just going to play it straight-- "Hey, hey, here they are after all," Loftus said suddenly. "All translated and everything. Give a listen." He turned up the volume. It was good cover-up, all right. Just as though they hadn't known a thing about it. Just discovered it and wanted a fast explanation. I hollered to Knight. "You actually see any of their rigs up ahead?" "Two of 'em. Just starting on an intersect with McGinty." "Can we make it first, do you think?" "Nip and tuck, skipper. Maybe. It's almost as if it's all a big surprise to 'em. They're still way out in left field, maybe not quite as close as we are." Knight muttered something over the rasping voice on his H-F. "--ought to get an Academy Award--"