"Has anybody computed it?" "Undoubtedly the navigators have--why? That is the course Dos-Tev gave us and it _must_ be followed, since he is Admiral-in-Chief of our side, the Blues. One slip may ruin the whole plan, give the Reds, our supposed enemy in these maneuvers, a victory, and get us all disrated." "Regardless, we'd better check on our course," Stone growled, unimpressed. "We'll compute it roughly, right here, and see where following these directions has put us." Taking up a slide-rule and a book of logarithms he set to work. "That initial rise doesn't mean a thing," he commented after a while, "except to get us far enough away from Earth so that the gravity is small, and to conceal from the casual observer that the effective take-off is still exactly at midnight." * * * * * Stone busied himself with calculations for many minutes. He stroked his forehead and scowled. "My figures are very rough, of course," he said puzzledly at last, "but they show that we've got no more tangential velocity with respect to the sun than a hen has teeth. And you can't tell me that it wasn't planned that way purposely--and _not_ by Dos-Tev, either. On the other hand, our radial velocity, directly toward the sun, which is the only velocity we have, amounted to something over fifty-two kilometers per second when we shut off power and is increasing geometrically under the gravitational pull of the sun. That course smells to high heaven, Martin! Dos-Tev never sent out any such a mess as that. The robots crossed him up, just as sure as hell's a man-trap! We're heading into the sun--and destruction!" Without reply Martin called the navigating room. "What do you think of this course, Henderson?" he asked. "I do not like it, sir," the officer replied. "Relative to the sun we have a tangential velocity of only one point three centimeters per second, while our radial velocity toward it is very nearly fifty-three thousand meters per second. We will not be in any real danger for several days, but it should be borne in mind that we have no tangential velocity." "You see, Stone, we are in no present danger," Martin pointed out, "and I am sure that Dos-Tev will send us additional instructions long before our situation becomes acute." "I'm not," the pessimistic scientist grunted. "Anyway, I would advise calling some of the other Blue fleets on your scrambled wave, for a check-up." "There would be no harm in that." Martin called the Communications Officer, and soon: "Communications Officers of all the Blue fleets of the Inner Planets, attention!" the message was hurled out into space by the full power of the flagship's mighty transmitter. "Flagship _Washington_ of the Terrestrial Contingent calling all Blue flagships. We have reason to suspect that the course which has been given us is false. We advise you to check your courses with care and to return to your bases if you disc...." CHAPTER III