"How about the cargo? Have you heard about that? Was it otherwise intact?" "As far as we can tell. The shippers will check everything in detail when the freighter gets back to port. But it's a good guess that the Overgovernment's Ym-400 is the only item missing." * * * * * Camhorn nodded. "A group which was planning to pick it up wouldn't be very interested in ordinary loot. That seems to make it conclusive." He wrinkled his nose reflectively. "Modus operandi?" he asked. "Two possibilities," Fry said. "They had themselves loaded aboard with the cargo, or they intercepted the transport en route and entered it in flight." "Which do you like?" "The first. In fact, the other is hardly a possibility. Even the IPA couldn't get aboard a modern automatic freighter between ports without setting off an explosion of alarms in every flight control station on its course. No such alarm was recorded. And there is no indication of a forcible entry." "So our thieves had themselves loaded on," said Camhorn. "Now, Gus, I've always been under the impression that the check system which keeps stowaways out of the automatic transports was foolproof." The IPA Chief shrugged. "It's been foolproof so far. But not because it was impossible to circumvent. It's simply that circumventing the check system would add up to so enormously expensive a proposition that the total cash value of a transport and its cargo wouldn't be worth the trouble. These people definitely were not considering expenses." "Apparently not," Camhorn said. "So how did they get the Ym-400 off the ship?" "They had a small boat loaded on board with them. That's a supposition, so far; they left very few traces of their activities. But it's the only way the thing could have been done. They had obtained exact information of the transport's plotted route and time schedule. At a calculated point, they picked up the two cases of YM, rerouted the ship, timed and planted their explosives, disconnected the alarm system at the entry lock, and left in the boat. Naturally, another ship was moving along with the freighter by then, waiting to pick them up. That's all there was to it." "You make it sound simple," said Camhorn. "The difficulty," said Gus Fry, "would be in preparing such an operation. No matter how much money these people could lay on the line, they must have spent several months in making the necessary arrangements without once alerting the port authorities." "They had enough time," Camhorn admitted reflectively. "Ym-400 has been shipped for a number of years in the same manner and over the same route." "I've been wondering," Fry remarked, "why this manner of shipping it was selected." Camhorn smiled briefly. "When was the last time an automatic transport was hijacked, Gus?" "Fifty-seven years ago," Fry said. "And the method employed then wouldn't have worked on a modern transport, or under the present check system."