He breathed a silent prayer, and it was answered. The Venusian grunted and turned away. Nolan walked quickly over to the wall, by the lock light, turned and stood surveying the scene without interest. His hands apparently were linked idly behind him--but behind his back they were moving swiftly, dexterously. A _clink_ of glass sounded, and Nolan winced as a sharp sliver cut his thumb. Then he stood motionless, waiting. The men were shock-wrapping a long, casket-like object. To judge by the care they were using, the contents were delicate and the handling would be rough, Nolan noted absently. Explosives, perhaps? The last loop of elastic webbing went around it, and the Venusian second pulled it taut. "All right," he grunted. "Take it away." "Lock!" bawled Woller as the men picked up the bundle. That was Nolan's signal. As slowly as he could manage he stepped idly away from the lock, away from the signal light, hugging the wall. A deckhand, not troubling to look at the warning light across the corridor--Nolan mentally thanked his gods--touched the release that opened the lock door. And-- Ravenous flame lashed out from the wall. IV Nolan was in motion before the incandescent gases had died. The half-dozen men who had been in the corridor were either down on the floor or blindly reeling about. Even without a proton-reflector behind it to focus its fierce energies, a pyro charge exploded on unarmored men can do a lot of damage. Nolan blessed the hunch that had warned of trouble, the remembrance of an old spacer's trick that had led him to hide a pyro charge in his shoe, back there in the stateroom. Still it had been luck, pure and simple, that gave him the chance to open the signal light socket, take out the lume and put the pyro pellet between the contacts. When he'd got out of range and the automatic warning as the lock opened had touched it off-- Catastrophe. He'd known when to close his eyes, where to stand for safety. The others hadn't. And so the others were blind. He grabbed a pyro from a writhing wretch on the floor--there was horror in him as he saw the seared face that had once been that of the Venusian second. He picked a heat suit out of the cubby, and was into it and in the lock before the blinded men who had escaped the full flare could recover themselves. The lock doors took an eternity to work, but at last he was out in the cold, black open. A hasty glance at the landscape told him nothing. Uranus or Pluto--it had to be one of them. That was all.