Banning heat-gun in hand, I prowled around to the other side of the helio kiosk. How that lurking intruder got away, I don't know. To this day I have no idea. Doubtless he heard or saw me, and slid along the line of deck-shadows in a magnetic cloak, getting away so swiftly that my infra-red glasses could not pick up the heat of his body or his mechanism. At all events he was gone. There was nothing but a faint chemical smell. And then, on the metal of the helio-room door, I saw a burned spot near the lock where his heat-torch just for a second had started its hissing; and then he had become aware of me and had taken flight. Someone trying to break into Smith's helio room! That would have taken me to Captain Mackensie whether Dr. Frye was there or not. But abruptly, again I went tense, so suddenly startled that the blood seemed to chill in my veins. The low-scale magnifiers were still in my ears, murmuring with a chaos of tiny, meaningless sounds. My metal heel-tip by chance must have struck a metal cross-beam of the deck. Abruptly I heard a voice, which at that second must have been raised louder than it had been an instant before. "Oh please! Oh my God, no!" A girl's voice, gasping that fragment in an anguish of terror. Nina's voice! * * * * * I frantically tuned the magnifiers, to clarify it; but I lost it and could not get it back. Nina's voice, seemingly from her sleeping-cubby, which I knew was just about under me in the superstructure. I went down the side companion ladder with a rush; ducked into a nearby cross corridor. It was dim, silent and empty. The name-plates glowed on the doors. I came to hers, with its glowing greenish letters, _Nina Blake_. Without the earphones there was only silence here now. For a second I stood, gun in hand, undecided. The door probably was locked; I did not dare try it to see. With my heat-torch, or even with a flash of the Banning gun, I could melt away the flimsy lock in a few seconds. But would that be quick enough? If one of the villains were in there with her now, and I blasted the door and startled him, his first move might be to kill her.... Tick-tick ... tick-tick.... With naked ears I suddenly realized that I was hearing the ticking from the big coffin-shaped box in her room.... Tick-tick ... tick-tick.... Rhythmic ... gruesome.... I own that my fingers were trembling as I crouched there by the door and adjusted my headphone.... The ticking rose to hammering thuds. Or was it my own pounding heart?... The hammering seemed to drown a tiny whisper of voices. Someone was in there with her, unquestionably.