"You wonder why I say this," Snyder laughed. "It's because I'm going to choose my death." He looked strange. "I don't want to hang. If I can't escape and be free again, I'll _make you kill me_." He stared for a minute, then threw back his head and laughed. The mimic laughed, high loonish squeals. "Hah, the blaster would be good. It has drama." Then the killer and his mimic curled up on the bunk in identical positions and went to sleep. A feeling of nausea crept over Logan. The sound of the insane babbling struck a sickening note. Snyder was a maniac. No one had told him. At the height of the giant's bloody career he had been in the Plutonian hinterland. But Bates had known. He cursed the gray-haired brother of the devil. The panel chronometer showed forty-six hours before he would reach Earth. Forty-six hours cooped up with a madman and a squealing mimic, his mind already foggy and with no prospect of rest. Since returning to Jupiter he had gone a long ways in the wrong direction. His logic was shaky and it was hard to tell what was right and wrong. A chill ran over him. Maybe he would be as mad as Snyder before he reached Earth. Trouble first struck on the fourth hour sunward. Its nature was mechanical and deadly. The instrument panel belched smoke. The roar of the jet engines became erratic and jerky. The patrolman's eyes swung from the mirror. His hands jumped, the left cutting the current with a blow to the ignition while the right unlocked and swung open the meter studded section. He heard Snyder stir behind him; the whimpering of the mimic. The confident drum of the engines died. Smoke poured upward and was sucked into the dying blades of the ventilator fans. Automatically activated, the blue emergency lights faded on. The short was deep in the electrical maze. He knew the wiring by heart, could close his eyes and see pages of diagrams he had had to memorize in Patrol school. His fingers burned as he found the bare wire, flecks of molten insulation clinging to the tips. A long jumper-wire was dug from the panel locker. "We're drifting," Snyder yelled. "Use the auxiliaries, fool." "Shut up," Logan snapped. The ship pitched and swung end over end, caught in the ether-tides of the asteroid belt. With the current cut they had no detectors, repulsers--even the air could not be replenished. Still he hesitated to expend the auxiliary jets. Their charge was limited. In space, auxiliaries weren't an answer to fate, only a brief postponement. The defective wire ripped out, he cut his fingers fumbling with the connecting posts. The spacer leveled and flowed stern first. Something, probably a meteor the size of a thumbnail, struck the hull. It shivered and began revolving again. "For God's sake, this is no way to die," Snyder screamed. The mimic screeched and leaped up and down.