Unless they thought the third man was dead. If they were sure of that ... _certain_ of it ... they would not hesitate to take the remaining two away. And if, by chance, the third man wasn't as dead as they thought he was, and could find a way to follow them home, there might still be a chance to free the other two. It was then that he thought of the _Scavenger_, and knew that he had found a way. In the cabin of the little scout ship he had worked swiftly, fearful that at any minute one of the marauders might come aboard to search it. Tom was no rocket pilot, but he did know that the count-down was automatic, and that every ship could run on an autopilot, as a drone, following a prescribed course until it ran out of fuel. Even the shell-evasion mechanism could be set on automatic.... Quickly he set the autopilot, plotted a simple high school math course for the ship, a course the Ranger ship would be certain to see, and to fire upon. He set the count-down clock to give himself plenty of time for the next step. Both the airlock to the _Scavenger_ and to the orbit-ship worked on electric motors. The _Scavenger_ was grappled to the orbit-ship's hull by magnetic cables. Tom dug into the ship's repair locker, found the wires and fuses that he needed, and swiftly started to work. It was an ingenious device. The inner airlock door in the orbit-ship was triggered to a fuse. He had left it ajar; the moment it was closed, by anyone intending to board the _Scavenger_, the fuse would burn, a circuit would open, and the little ship's autopilot would go on active. The ship would blast away from its moorings, head out toward Mars.... And the fireworks would begin. All that he would have to worry about then would be getting himself aboard the Ranger ship without being detected. Which was almost impossible. But he knew there was a way. There was one place no one would think to look for him, if he could manage to keep out of range of the viewscreen lenses ... the outer hull of the ship. If he could clamp himself to the hull, somehow, and manage to cling there during blastoff, he could follow Greg and Johnny right home. He checked the fuse on the airlock once again to make certain it would work. Then he waited, hidden behind the little scout ship's hull, until the orbit-ship swung around into shadow. He checked his suit dials ... oxygen for twenty-two hours, heater pack fully charged, soda-ash only half saturated ... it would do. Above him he could see the rear jets of the Ranger. He swung out onto the orbit-ship's hull, and began crawling up toward the enemy ship. It was slow going. Every pressure suit had magnetic boots and hand-pads to enable crewmen to go outside and make repairs on the hull of a ship in transit. Tom clung, and moved, and clung again, trying to reach the protecting hull of the Ranger before the orbit-ship swung him around to the sun-side again....