Koa was waiting in the passageway outside. Rip told him what had happened, mimicking O’Brine’s Irish accent. The sergeant-major shook his head sadly. "This is what I meant, Lieutenant. Cruisers don’t clean their tubes more’n once in ten accelerations. The commander is just thinking up dirty work for us to do, like I said." "Never mind," Rip told him. "Let’s find our squadroom and get settled, then draw some protective clothing and equipment. We’ll clean his tubes for him. Our turn will come later." He remembered the last thing Joe Barris had said, only a few hours before. Joe was right, he thought. To ourselves we’re supermen, but to the spacemen we’re just simps. Evidently O’Brine was the kind of space officer who ate Planeteers for breakfast. Rip thought of the way the commander had turned red with rage at that crack about his face, and resolved, "He may eat me for breakfast, but I’ll try to be a good, tough mouthful!" CHAPTER THREE - CAPTURE AND DRIVE! Commander O’Brine had not exaggerated. The residue of carbon and thorium on the blast tube walls was stubborn, dirty, and penetrating. It was caked on in a solid sheet, but when scraped, it broke up into fine powder. The Planeteers wore coveralls, gloves, and face masks with respirators, but that didn’t prevent the stuff from sifting through onto their bodies. Rip, who directed the work and kept track of the radiation with a gamma-beta ion chamber and an alpha proportional counter, knew they would have to undergo personal decontamination. He took a reading on the ion chamber. Only a few milliroentgens of beta and gamma radiation. That was the dangerous kind, because both beta particles and gamma rays could penetrate clothing and skin. But the Planeteers wouldn’t get enough of a dose to do any harm at all. The alpha count was high, but so long as they didn’t breathe any of the dust it was not dangerous. The _Scorpius_ had six tubes. Rip divided the Planeteers into two squads, one under his direction and one under Koa’s. Each tube took a couple of hours’ hard work. Several times during the cleaning the men would leave the tube and go into the main mixing chamber while the tube was blasted with live steam to throw the stuff they had scraped off out into space. Each squad was on its last tube when a spaceman arrived. He saluted Rip. "Sir, the safety officer says to secure the tubes." That could mean only one thing: deceleration. Rip rounded up his men. "We’re finished. The safety officer passed the word to secure the tubes, which means we’re going to decelerate." He smiled grimly. "You all know they gave us this job just out of pure love for the Planeteers. So remember it when you go through the control room to the decontamination chamber." The Planeteers nodded enthusiastically. Rip led the way from the mixing chamber through the heavy safety door into the engine control room. His entrance was met with poorly concealed grins by the spacemen.