Mury nodded placidly. The officer turned casually, spoke to the two blue-chromiumed robots, who faced about smartly; then, snapping his fingers, their master wheeled once more. "Just a moment. I almost forgot this.... Strangely enough, one of my men stumbled over it in your starboard lock." He fumbled inside his tunic a moment, displayed in his hand a heavy .20 service flame gun. A flat and terrible silence lay in the control room. Then Mury broke it, as it had to be broken quickly: "We weren't supposed to have any arms aboard. I can't say where that came from." "Can't say, eh?" said the other musingly. Ryd, cold sweat on his forehead, stared in horrid fascination, first at the man and then at the fighter robots. He tensed himself to fight back, now, at the last, like a cornered rat--he hardly knew how or why. With a shrug, the officer dropped the weapon into his pocket. "Ah, well--so many of these little mysteries remain just that. We mustn't hold up Terra's power supply." He turned once more to go. "I'll have the medico here in a flicker." The trio passed out through the whispering locks, out to the waiting spaceboat. Ryd found that his mouth was parchment-dry; he stared at the apparently unshaken Mury, and drew a shuddering breath. "I guess," he said jerkily, "we fooled them." Mury smiled. "Yes," he agreed. "We fooled them this time." Then a thought jolted Ryd; he gasped, "Listen! Did you think about--That battleship might have picked up those guys you dropped out of the locks! They've got us right here--we can't get away--maybe they're just--" "Why would they?" Mury shrugged again. "But that chance had to be taken. Space is rather big, you know." IV It was not more than three minutes later that young Arliess began to twitch and mutter under the neuromuscular impact of a cc. of arterially-injected _vitalin_. The Fleet doctor straightened and returned his small, bright needle to its velvet-lined case, snapping it shut hurriedly. "He'll recover consciousness within a very few minutes. You'll be wanting to be on your way, no doubt...." When the doctor had escaped gratefully from the _Shahrazad's_ topsy-turvy gravity, Mury gave power to the overdrive, sent the ship swinging back into a course for the point of intersection with the flight of the power projectile. The great curve that had taken them off the planet had placed them now almost directly in front of that hurtling objective; _Shahrazad_, still slowly gathering additional momentum, would be overtaken by the cargo shell at the moment that she reached a velocity practically equal with its own.