"Fallon!" barked McCauley. "Come to the ship immediately! That's an order!" "I'm busy," said Fallon's voice, defiantly. "But I'll tell you something! I'm not going back to Earth with the rest of you. I was on the run when I passed myself off as somebody else and got on the ship. I was on the run from Death Row in the pen. They had me ready for the hot seat in two days more, and I got away. Why should I go back to Earth?" He paused. And then he said, his tone indescribable: "Everybody is hearing me. I fixed that! I doctored the aerial switch so when it's turned on it can't be turned off again! McCauley can't keep you from hearing me now, because he called me! And McCauley's going to squirm now! I joined up with him to wipe out every one of you, so we could go back to Earth with the atom fuel to sell to contacts he's got! He tried to kill Soames and he tried to kill Hathaway! He tried to kill me today, by getting me lost, but the rest of you jumped to help me and he had to join in so you wouldn't know what he'd tried!" McCauley winced. "Poor fool!" Randy said. "Now listen," said Fallon's voice fiercely. "I've told you the truth. If I'd told you before you wouldn't've believed me. But you're going to believe me now, because I've scrapped my chance of living--it wasn't good anyhow--to tell you! You watch McCauley! Send word back to Earth of what I've told you. He'll not dare to do a thing when a dying man's accused him--and that's what I am!" "Fallon!" barked McCauley again. "It's a mistake! You thought I planned that stuff, and I was just playing along with you! The others knew all about it! They knew everything you just told them! It's a lie! I'm not planning anything. I just played along with you...." "Yes?" jeered Fallon. "Tell that to the aviators! The spacemen don't believe you!" Then he said: "So what? I'll be the first man on Mars! I'm Joe Fallon, 4272365, Walla Walla Penitentiary, and I'll go down in the history books. I'm taking off for Mars. Want to race?" There was a sudden roaring. It was the sound of a rocket blast, conducted by metal to a space suit and picked up by the microphone inside. "T-taking off," gasped Fallon, outside. "You get this story back to Earth and he won't dare do anything! He won't dare! But I didn't rat on him! Only on what he was going to do." After that, there was only the roar of the rocket blast. They poured out of the ship in space suits as fast as the air lock would let them. Perhaps some of them had a faint, faint hope that it was merely a joke. But it wasn't. There were boxes and bales floating heavily, soggily, in the emptiness about Eros. They had been thrust aside when Fallon took the rocket for himself. And he was gone. McCauley made an irresolute movement back toward the ship, and Randy said quickly, via space phone: "No use, Ed! We can't make more than six gees acceleration in the ship, and in a loadless rocket he'll make twelve! We can't catch him!"