"Sorry if I slugged you too hard, but the boss said to be sure. Be sure, he says, and he sends us out in one of the first tanks we made instead of one of the new jobs! Sometimes, I--" "No escape craft? No--" "You kidding? We sit here and take it! We could take to the ports, but the power packs on these suits are no match for those space tenders of theirs. They'd pick us up sure. Me, I'd die ten times first!" Jon tried to assimilate the information, tried to take it all in even as he struggled to gain back his full consciousness. "Mind telling me where we are? Where we're headed? Why in hell I was shanghaied?" "Right now, about two points spherical north-northwest of Jupiter, minus about twelve to the ecliptic. Where we're headed you'll find out, if we live through this. And you weren't shanghaied. Not all the way, anyway. You didn't think that alarm system stayed quiet all by itself, did you? Or that the jetgiro flew itself to where you found it? The boss is still going to be sore. We were supposed to put the net over two of you--" So it _had_ been too easy! Of course the 'quake hadn't been counted on and that had disrupted the plan, but at least there had been a plan, and that meant that there was someone who wanted him away from the ITA. "You weren't on Titan five minutes before we knew." "But what about the girl? The Lenantech arrested with me?" Something cold was suddenly eating away inside him, and the memory of the awful quakes came back to him in a rush, and he could visualize Deanne, lying lifeless somewhere. "Don't know. As it was, we almost missed you after the quake started. Plans went completely haywire as far as she was concerned. But no more damn fool questions. I was supposed to get you oriented before they were on top of us and you've got it all, except for--" There was a sudden lurch and Jon was thrown sprawling, was suddenly picked up as though by some gigantic hand and thrown bodily toward a self-sealing hatch that closed just as he crashed heavily into it. The chamber was now all but airless. They'd been hit by a Tinker missile, and there was a gaping, ragged hole somewhere in this ship's hide. He struggled to his feet. Then saw the other man, not moving, crumpled to the deck. A jagged fragment of metal was embedded in his chest. There was another sickening lurch and another. They were being clobbered with everything the Tinker-ship had. But somehow he got to the wounded man's side. The hard eyes opened for but a moment, and the lips moved. The sounds they made were but a whisper in his earphones. "Six ... nine-X. Point ... oh one-Y. Eight six. Z--" And then the eyes opened wide, and the lips closed, and the man was dead. * * * * * The ship shuddered again, and through his helmet Kane heard a dull, booming explosion, and he knew the craft had been fatally hit. Another second and it would be pulling apart at the seams. All Tinker guns were on-target and firing at will.