Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited and checked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It _couldn’t_ go wrong. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to go back to Mars. Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn’t appreciate his position. He hadn’t done anything to them, but they just didn’t like him. He didn’t know why; he’d _tried_ to get along with them. Well, if they didn’t like him, the hell with them. If things worked out the way he figured, they’d be damned sorry. He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, he pretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic’s locker. And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife. Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship’s two lifeboats. He was saving the other for himself. The ship was eight hours out from Earth and still decelerating when Clayton pulled his getaway. It was surprisingly easy. He was supposed to be asleep when he sneaked down to the drive compartment with the knife. He pushed open the door, looked in, and grinned like an ape. The Engineer and the two jetmen were out cold from the chloral hydrate in the coffee from the kitchen. Moving rapidly, he went to the spares locker and began methodically to smash every replacement part for the drivers. Then he took three of the signal bombs from the emergency kit, set them for five minutes, and placed them around the driver circuits. He looked at the three sleeping men. What if they woke up before the bombs went off? He didn’t want to kill them though. He wanted them to know what had happened and who had done it. He grinned. There was a way. He simply had to drag them outside and jam the door lock. He took the key from the Engineer, inserted it, turned it, and snapped off the head, leaving the body of the key still in the lock. Nobody would unjam it in the next four minutes. Then he began to run up the stairwell toward the good lifeboat. He was panting and out of breath when he arrived, but no one had stopped him. No one had even seen him. He clambered into the lifeboat, made everything ready, and waited. The signal bombs were not heavy charges; their main purposes was to make a flare bright enough to be seen for thousands of miles in space. Fluorine and magnesium made plenty of light—and heat. Quite suddenly, there was no gravity. He had felt nothing, but he knew that the bombs had exploded. He punched the LAUNCH switch on the control board of the lifeboat, and the little ship leaped out from the side of the greater one.