The ends were faintly scorched and blued; but there was something else, too. They were bevelled off curiously, as if they had been notched. "Cut with a file!" Harwich fairly snarled. "The wire was cut with a file. Then the insulation was rewrapped carefully so that all the evidence was hidden!" The cause of the accident was plain. The wire had been able to carry the load of power easily enough during the tests; but under the additional load of fighting the Ionian hell-zone, it had burned through and snapped! "Bayley!" Paul Arnold whispered in the ominous stillness that now pervaded the plummeting derelict of the RQ257. "He brought the condenser, you remember! Evan, I know you were careful to watch everything he did during the assembly and tests in the lab itself. He must have had the Gyon condenser at his apartment before he brought it to us. He must have doctored it there! He was planning even then to get rid of me! And when he found you around, he decided that he wouldn't weep if he got rid of you too!" "But why?" Harwich growled in momentary confusion. "Why should Bayley want to get rid of you?" * * * * * It was almost a silly question, as Harwich realized at once; but now Paul was answering it. "It's simple," said the youth. "Bayley financed me after Dad was killed--yes. He watched my experiments and tests and studied my apparatus. He has a pretty keen mind. With me out of the way, no one but himself will know just how the Penetrator works! He can fix up another ship and come to Io himself without any competition! Anything he learns or discovers on the Forbidden Moon will be his alone! Or so he thinks, anyway." It was too clear now! Evan Harwich knew that he and the boy were tumbling helplessly into the maw of hell now. In a useless, derelict ship they were falling toward the Forbidden Moon! They were already within the gates of unholy mystery! Death seemed very close. Yet the cold anger that hissed in the patrol pilot's brain, made him determined to live, somehow, for revenge! "We'll be smashed if we stay in the ship, Paul," he said fiercely. "So we've got to jump for it with our safety equipment." Quickly and more smoothly than did the youth, for he was well-trained, Harwich got into his space armor. Next he donned two massive packs, one on his chest and one on his back. The exit door of the cabin was jammed, but with his pistol the patrol pilot fired an explosive bullet into its hinges. A second afterward, Arnold and Harwich crept through the rent, while escaping air puffed out around them. They leaped into the emptiness almost together. With the heat-warped wreck of the gallant old RQ257 falling beside them, they continued their plummeting descent. There were still almost a thousand miles to go, for the distance between Io itself, and the gigantic energy envelope that surrounded it, was perhaps three thousand miles.