Hugh Warren chuckled grimly, "Let them. They'll never catch the _Liberty_. This is the fastest little ship afloat in space. We can run circles around anything that ever punched holes in the ether." "Yeah?" said Muldoon interestedly. "What's your speed?" "On test flights," answered Warren proudly, "about a thousand. But that was straight cruising speed. In an emergency we might be able to make as much as twelve-fifty." "What! A cruising speed of a thousand miles per second? But--but that's over ten million miles per day!" "And with Venus in inferior conjunction," said Nora excitedly, "we can be there in two and a half days!" "Well, not quite. You have to allow a time lag for acceleration and deceleration. But--" Captain Warren grinned happily--"three days should do the trick. Not bad, eh, Gary?" Gary Lane said dazedly, "Not bad! Mister, when they start giving medals for understatement, you ought to get one as big as the United Nations Victory Tower. Why, the universal record for an Earth-Venus flight is almost a day longer than that." "Three days," supplied Warren, "eighteen hours, twenty-three and a half minutes. Which same so-called 'record' we're going to bust six ways to hell-and-gone on this little shuttle. Only--" he admitted ruefully--"our new record won't count, seeing as how it's unofficial as hell. Well, Venus it is? I'll be leaving you, then, to chart the course and trajectory. Hawkins, show our guests to their quarters. We'll meet later in the lounge." And he vanished bridgeward. * * * * * So set the _Liberty_ forth upon the first leg of its argosy. The next three days sped swiftly. So fraught with activity, indeed, were his waking hours, that Gary Lane found scant time in which to acquaint himself with the _Liberty_ and its personnel. One thing he learned from his space commander friend: that there were, in addition to himself and his companions, fifteen souls aboard the craft. Of these, three were Patrol officers: Hugh Warren himself, his mate, Lieutenant Angus MacDonald, and the Chief Engineer, a lean, taciturn man named Sebold. Two more were subalterns: Bud Howard, the assistant engineer, and Tommy Edwards, the ship's Sparks. The enlisted men included Herby Hawkins, the steward; Tony, potentate of the galley; four able-bodied spacemen; and four blasters of the jet-chamber crew. "We're short," Hugh Warren pointed out, "five men. The five as whom you masqueraded when you came aboard. Two of these were spacemen. We can spare them. Another two were blasters. We can get by without them, too, though it means longer shifts and harder work for the remaining four. But the other one--" He shook his head--"we're really going to need him. He was Fred Harkness, my first mate. A good spaceman with a keen mind for figures and a swift, intuitive ability at handling a ship in an emergency. If we run into any snags we're going to wish he was along." "Then why did you let him go?" asked Gary.