The Senior Watch Officer saluted and shouted, "Engine Room reports the engines have all stopped, Sir. Don't know why. We're operating the lights and vents on emergency power." The Communications Officer spoke up. "The pirate ship reports that they're responsible, Sir. They say they've got a new device that will leave us without atomic power for as long as they like." As if to confirm this, over the loudspeaker came a voice. "Ahoy, STAR _Kismet_. Stand by for boarders. If you don't open up to us, we'll blast you off the map." "Pirates! Attacking us! Incredible!" cried the Captain. "There are no pirates any more. What have we got a Space Patrol for? Where in blazes is the Space Patrol anyway?" The Communications Officer gulped. "Er, ah, we got in contact with Commodore Trumble. He says his ship can get here in ten hours anyway, and for us to wait for him." Captain Fogarty snorted. "Fat lot of good he'll do us. Wait for him, eh? Well, we'll just blow that pirate out of the sky right now. Stand by the guns!" "The guns are useless," whined the Gunnery Officer. "The atomics that run them won't operate at all. What will we do?" "Ahoy, STAR _Kismet_. Open up your hatches when we arrive and let us in, or we won't spare a man of you," boomed the loudspeaker. "Pirates going to board us. How nice," muttered Grandma to herself as she eavesdropped just outside the door to the bridge. "They'll never get through the hatches alive. At least our small arms still work. We'll kill 'em all!" cried Captain Fogarty. "We only want one of you. All the rest of you will be spared if you open up the hatches and don't try to make no trouble," came the voice over the radio. "Tell them I'd rather all of us be killed than to let one dirty pirate on board my ship," the Captain shouted to the Communications Officer. "Oh, my goodness. That doesn't sound very smart," Grandma said half aloud. And turning from the doorway, she crept back through the deserted passageway. The main passenger hatch was not too far from the bridge. Grandma found it with ease, and in less than three minutes she had zipped herself into one of the emergency-use space suits stowed away beside the port. She felt awfully awkward climbing into the monstrous steel and plastic contraption, and her small body didn't quite fit the proportions of the metallic covering. But once she had maneuvered herself into it, she felt quite at ease. Opening the inner door to the airlock, she clanked into the little room. As the door shut behind her, she pressed the cycling button and evacuated the air from the lock. A minute or so later she heard poundings outside the airlock and quite calmly she reached out a mailed fist and turned a switch plainly marked: EMERGENCY LOCK DO NOT OPERATE IN FLIGHT The outer hatch opened almost immediately. The radio in Grandma's suit crackled with static. "What are you doing here?" demanded a voice over the suit radio.