"Yes," said Seaworth, his eyes troubled, "but he happens to want me devilish bad, you see. I'll admit I'm not going to have much taste for the trip back to the moon--I wouldn't put it past him to hold up the biggest passenger-ship in space if he knew I was travelling on it." "I wouldn't myself," Evans said. "But we're heading back next week after our relief-period. Why not go back with us?" Seaworth's face cleared. "Thanks a lot, really, old man. It's a fact I've been worried about this trip back, for if I get what I'm after on earth, it means that when I get back to the moon we can find the Hawk's base and make a trap of it to catch him when he comes in. And I want to see him put away before I check out--it's got to be something of a personal duel between us." In the next half-score of hours in which they hurtled on toward earth, Evans saw that Seaworth was indeed getting more and more impatient and eager as the great disk grew large before them. He fretted at the delay as they moved in through earth's atmosphere at slackening speed, and down through the crowded converging space-lanes toward the huge New York inter-stellar station. And when the great Earth-Guard ship shot down into the funnel-shaped landing-framework and came to a halt with all its nose-tubes firing, Seaworth emerged from it with its first officers. * * * * * Briefly he assured himself once more that Evans was willing for him to make the trip back out to the moon in the Earth-Guard craft in the following week, and he also made certain that his own little rocket could remain attached to the greater craft and be refueled with it. Then he hastened away in the crowds that poured here and there across and around the great rocket-station. Evans stood still for a few moments gazing around him, bewildered a little as he invariably was by the sudden transition from the silence and gloom of the great void to this brilliant and hurried scene. Across the great station at its departure-side a huge cargo-rocket was taking off, its firing-tubes deafening the ears as it thundered up into the sunlight and vanished. Already a great, sleek passenger-craft was being slid into the ascension-framework just vacated, and as its warning-bell rang out, the last belated passengers were hurrying toward it with their porters and luggage. There remained to Evans the disagreeable task for which he had been bracing himself during the last hours of the trip--that of informing crusty old Commander Cain of his encounter with the Hawk. When he had been ushered into the office of the white-haired and white-mustached old space-veteran who was head of the Earth-Guard, Evans made his brief report with the other's stare piercing him to the marrow. When he had finished, the Commander, as he had expected, delivered himself of a furious blast of profanity.