Weird occurrence. Young Carson had been on the porch of their Long Island home. From the sky overhead, where nothing was to be seen, had come a little stab of waving white light. A helio signal. From their father? Certainly it seemed so. It told them to come secretly to Asteroid-9. He would be there, at the base of Andros. And so they had come to try and help their father. "Help him?" I murmured. "Yes. Oh, Mr. Fanning--" "Jim is shorter," I interjected. "--Jim, you see, we couldn't believe father is a criminal. Captured maybe and forced to operate his ship by these bandits, and appealing to us for help." Desperate adventure indeed. But they had tackled it; had taken passage on the little _Seven Stars_ which they understood would pass very close to Asteroid-9, this voyage. And they had known completely nothing of the _Seven Stars'_ cargo or of any plot which the raider might have against her! Brenda gasped now when I told her of those angles. And there were still other angles that puzzled me. "Brenda, have you ever heard of an Earth-criminal called the Chameleon?" She had not; and when I described his exploits of a few years ago, she was convinced that by no possible chance could her aged father have been secretly doing things like that. Nor Philip either, for that matter. She declared it vehemently, and I believed her. But the man with the metal skull had been on the _Seven Stars_ as stowaway, or spy among the passengers, ship's officers or crew. I had seen him there in young Carson's stateroom. Brenda, when I was chasing her, had eluded me. "I saw you fighting with somebody at Philip's window," she told me now. "I was going to escape from the ship then." "Even though Philip was dead, you were going on with your plans alone?" "Yes, why not?" She smiled her twisted little smile. "Then I saw you fall to the deck. I ran, bent over you. I--I thought you were dead. So I--I ran down to the porte and took off. Philip and I had planned it so carefully. Oh, poor Philip!" "He didn't miscalculate those air-mechanisms," I muttered. "That damned villain must have been there in the corridor for an instant while I was talking to Kellogg, and shoved the controls--killed Philip." And I had tried to do the same thing to Brenda! I could only thank the Lord now that I had failed! * * * * * The two of us, alone here on Asteroid-9. No food nor water. Perhaps the only inhabitants of this desolate little world. Abruptly she was gripping me. "Look--Jim--look there!" I followed her gesture. Up in the leaden sky beyond the looming triple spires of Andros, a tiny speck had appeared. A ship coming down. Breathlessly we watched. In a few minutes it was a little oblong blob. "It's coming this way, Brenda." "Yes." It seemed circling a little. By the look it would land on a small level plateau some quarter of a mile from us. We stared, mute, transfixed, watching.