Crewmen stopped with food halfway to their mouths, jerked away from tables. Orders buzzed along a dozen wires, and section chiefs began reporting their battle-stations alert and ready. Finally Tawney snapped on the general public address system speaker. "Now get this," he roared. "I want every inch of this ship searched ... every corridor, every compartment. I want a special crew standing by for missile launching. I want double guards at every airlock. If they get a ship away from here, the man who lets them through had better be dead when I find him...." He broke off, clutching the speaker until his voice was under control again. "All right, move. They're armed, but there's no place they can go. Find them." A section-chief came back over the speaker. "Dead or alive, boss?" "Alive, you idiot! At least the Hunter brat. I'll take the other one any way you can get him." He switched off, and waited, pacing the control cabin like a caged animal. Ten minutes later a buzzer sounded. "Hydroponics, boss. All clear." "No sign of them?" "Nothing." Another buzz. "Number seven ore hold. Nothing here." Still another buzz. "Crew's quarters. Nothing, boss." One by one the reports came in. Fuming, Tawney checked off the sections, watched the net draw tighter throughout the ship. They were somewhere, they _had_ to be.... But nobody seemed to find them. He was buzzing for his first mate when the power went off. The lights went out, the speaker went dead in his hand. The computers sighed contentedly and stopped computing. Abruptly the emergency circuits went into operation, flooding the darkness with harsh white lights. The intercom started buzzing again. "Engine room, boss." "What happened down there?" Tawney roared. The man sounded like he'd just run the mile. "Generators," he panted. "Blown out." "Well, get somebody in there to fix them. Have a crew seal off the area...." "Can't, boss. Fix them, I mean." "Why not? What have we got electricians for?" "There's nothing left to fix. The generators aren't wrecked ... they're demolished...." "Then get the pair that did it...." "They're not here. We've been sealed up tight. There's no way anybody could have gotten in here...." After that, things began to get confusing. * * * * * For a while Merrill Tawney thought that his crew was going crazy ... and then he began to wonder if he were the one who was losing his mind. Whatever the case, Merrill Tawney was certain of one thing. The things that were happening on his orbit-ship could not possibly be happening. A guard in one of the outer shell storage holds called in with a disquieting report. Greg Hunter, it seemed, had just been spotted vanishing into one of the storage compartments from the main outer-shell corridor. When the guard had broken through the jammed hatchway to collar his trapped victim, there was no sign of the victim anywhere around.