"Sure," grinned the pirate chieftain, "but you got yours to get, and I've already got mine. Aces full. Now look here, bucko--" He bent forward, and his voice assumed a wheedling tone--"They ain't no sense in us two scrapping. We got off on the wrong foot together, that's all's the trouble with us. You ain't got nothin' against me, and I ain't got nothin' against you. To tell the truth, I kinda _like_ you. You got guts. I got respect for anybody that'll stand up and swap punches even when the deck's stacked against him. Now, you strike me as being a right sensible guy. I've got a little proposition to make you--" He paused, and Chip's eyes narrowed as every nerve in his body quivered with raw dislike. But he capped the rising flood within him. It was wisdom in this crisis to test every opening which presented itself. "Go on," said Chip. "I'm listening." "Good! Now, you just made the biggest discovery any man in space ever made. A mountain of ekalastron. Right?" "I'm not saying," parried Chip. "But if I did?" "Oh, you _did_, bucko! Well, listen. Here's the proposition. I got a nice little organization here. Fifty good men. Maybe they ain't the cream o' society--" Jordan chuckled--"but they're as good fightin' men as ever lifted gravs. "I've also got, thanks to Doc Blaine's dopiness, the biggest, toughest, hardest-to-lick spaceship that ever fired a jet. It can stand up against any cruiser in the fleet. Matter of fact, the only thing that keeps us from becomin' the most powerful pirate organization in Space is the Patrol. The _Aurora_ could fight off one, two, maybe as much as a half dozen of their battle ships--but you know how Spacies are. When they get all hot and bothered about something, they don't mess around with small-time stuff. They call out the whole damn fleet. And I'm frank in admittin', bucko, that's why we've had to hide out so far, concealin' ourselves in the Bog like we was just an ordinary asteroid." "So?" said Chip. "So how's about you and me throwin' in together? You tell me where this here mine of ekalastron is. We'll fly out there and work it and get enough ek to armor-plate this whole damn asteroid." "This whole--!" Warren started. What proposition he had expected from the outlaw he did not know, but certainly it was nothing so magnificently fantastic as this. And yet--his brow cudgeled. Was it so fantastic, after all? Every chemist knew that element No. 97 was one of the most malleable of all metals. A thousand tons of it, girdling the _Aurora_ to a thickness of only a cobweb veil, would undoubtedly convert the asteroid into an impregnable battleship, a superdreadnaught that could defy the combined assault of every Patrolship in the void! * * * * * Blacky Jordan was staring at him eagerly. "Well, how about it, bucko? It's a good idea, ain't it?" Chip said tentatively, "It's an--idea, all right. But how about me, Jordan? What do _I_ get out of this?"