"But they had, all right!" Tremont told himself. "That was no chance, anywhere along the line. I've been very neatly highjacked!" The girl must have trailed him to make sure they picked up the right man. Braigh had never explained exactly what he was doing on the satellite; he could have arranged for the assignment of the rocket, or perhaps of the pilot, when Tremont called. Then they had gathered around to hitch rides, and had been in control ever since. Tremont looked at the slowly progressing constellations and cursed himself. He began to have the feeling that there would be no way out of this. They would regret pitching him into space in such an offhand manner, he reminded himself, when they opened his case. It would be too late as far as he was concerned. _Come to think of it_, he considered, _that Braigh looks pretty smart, under that idiot-kid pose. He might just break my code, given time. And the parts made up of model photos or drawings he can sell almost as is._ When he came to think of it, Tremont was surprised that no one had tried the same racket before. He had laid out a fortune for what the three thieves were stealing from him. He drew in his left arm again and raised the wrist to the neck of his helmet. By looking down his nose, he discovered to his surprise that he had been out nearly an hour. He had wasted more time than he thought in reviewing his earlier encounters with Dorothy aboard the starship and the others at the spaceport. He raised the water tube to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful. The taste was stale. _I could do with a beer, if this is the way I'm going out_, he thought. _They can joke all they want about dying in bed after traveling to the stars; but you could order a beer even if it killed you._ It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted as being a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it, and discovered after a few moments that it was growing brighter. It continued to do so for half an hour. "It might be another ship!" he breathed, then he began to shout, "Mayday! Mayday!" over his radio. He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even after the outline was definitely recognizable as a rocket. He found himself drifting across its course near the bow. It was hard to estimate the distance, but he guessed it to be something like a hundred yards. _Drifting?_ he asked himself. _It should be going past me like a shooting star! Unless they took exactly the same curve from Centauri VII--_ Then he could read the numbers he feared to see. AC7-4-525. His own ship. He had gone out of the air lock mainly on a puff of air, with some fumbling help from Peters. That had been enough to send him out of sight of the ship--in space, not necessarily very far--and now he was back, after two hours.