Rip's lips were compressed, he made quick calculations. And Dane saw that, though Jellico was the master, Rip was fully fit to follow in the Captain's boot prints. There was a sudden silence in the cabin--the demand had stopped. The agents below must now have realized that the ship with the distress signals blazing on her nose was not going to reply. Dane found he could not watch the visa plate now, Rip's hands about their task filled his whole range of sight. He knew that Shannon was using every bit of his skill and knowledge to jockey them into the position where they could ride their tail rockets down to the scorched rock of the E-Stat field. Perhaps it wasn't as smooth a landing as Jellico could have made. But they did it. Rip's hands were quiet, again that patch of darkness showed on the back of his tunic. He made no move from his seat. "Secure--" Ali's voice floated up to them. Dane unbuckled his safety webbing and got up, looking to Shannon for orders. This was Rip's plan they were to carry through. Then something moved him to give honor where it was due. He touched that bowed shoulder before him. "Fin landing, brother! Four points and down!" Rip glanced up, a grin made him look his old self. "Ought to have a recording of that for the Board when I go up for my pass-through." Dane matched his smile. "Too bad we didn't have someone out there with a tri-dee machine." "More likely it'd be evidence at our trial for piracy--" their words must have reached Ali on the ship's inter-com, for his deflating reply came back, to remind them of why they had made that particular landing. "Do we move now?" "Check first," Rip said into the mike. Dane looked at the visa-plate. Against a background of jagged rock teeth was the bubble of the E-Stat housing--more than three-quarters of it being in the hollowed out sections below the surface of the miniature world which supported it, as Dane knew. But a beam of light shown from the dome to center on the grounded Queen. They had not caught the Stat agents napping. They made the rounds of the spacer, checking on each of the semi-conscious men. Ali had ready the artificial oxgy tanks--they must move fast once they began the actual task of clearing and restocking the hydro. "Hope you have a good story ready," he commented as the other three joined him by the hatch to don the suits which would enable them to cross the airless, heatless surface of the asteroid. "We have a poisoned hydro," Dane said. "One look at the plants we dump will give you the lie. They won't accept our story without investigation." Dane was aroused. Did Ali think he was a stupid as all that? "If you'd take a look in there now you'd believe me," he snapped. "What did you do?" Ali sounded genuinely interested. "Chucked a heated can of lacoil over a good section. It's wilting down fast in big patches."