"I've never seen anything so wonderful," Ellen said raptly. He laid an arm around her waist. The intercom chose that precise moment to blare: "Attention! Emergency! All hands to emergency stations! Blades, get to Chung's office on the double! All hands to emergency stations!" Blades was running before the siren had begun to howl. Rear Admiral Barclay Hulse had come in person. He stood as if on parade, towering over Chung. The asterite was red with fury. Avis Page crouched in a corner, her eyes terrified. Blades barreled through the doorway and stopped hardly short of a collision. "What's the matter?" he puffed. "Plenty!" Chung snarled. "These incredible thumble-fumbed oafs--" His voice broke. _When he gets mad, it means something!_ Hulse nailed Blades with a glance. "Good day, sir," he clipped. "I have had to report a regrettable accident which will require you to evacuate the Station. Temporarily, I hope." "Huh?" "As I told Mr. Chung and Miss Page, a nuclear missile has escaped us. If it explodes, the radiation will be lethal, even in the heart of the asteroid." "What ... what--" Blades could only gobble at him. "Fortunately, the _Pallas Castle_ is here. She can take your whole complement aboard and move to a safe distance while we search for the object." "How the _devil_?" Hulse allowed himself a look of exasperation. "Evidently I'll have to repeat myself to you. Very well. You know we have had to make some adjustments on our launchers. What you did not know was the reason. Under the circumstances, I think it's permissible to tell you that several of them have a new and secret, experimental control system. One of our missions on this cruise was to carry out field tests. Well, it turned out that the system is still full of, ah, bugs. Gunnery Command has had endless trouble with it, has had to keep tinkering the whole way from Earth. "Half an hour ago, while Commander Warburton was completing a reassembly--lower ranks aren't allowed in the test turrets--something happened. I can't tell you my guess as to what, but if you want to imagine that a relay got stuck, that will do for practical purposes. A missile was released under power. Not a dummy--the real thing. And release automatically arms the war head." * * * * * The news was like a hammerblow. Blades spoke an obscenity. Sweat sprang forth under his arms and trickled down his ribs. "No such thing was expected," Hulse went on. "It's an utter disaster, and the designers of the system aren't likely to get any more contracts. But as matters were, no radar fix was gotten on it, and it was soon too far away for gyrogravitic pulse detection. The thrust vector is unknown. It could be almost anywhere now.