"You will take it this time. Drake will take over the duty the next time it is yours. I wish to talk to him." He turned to me. "Will you come into my cabin, Drake?" "Yes, sir," I said. I followed him through the door and we entered the chartroom. You don't walk into that room, you drop into it. The corridor which separates the two parts of Spartan's cabin is equipped with small doors opposite each other and in the approximate center of the craft. You must pull yourself up to the opening and slide through by aid of centrifugal force. Spartan was standing opposite the door when I came through. I dropped to the floor beside him and he gestured for me to sit down on the floor. "Drake," he said, "I understand you had some difficulty bringing Grover's body into the ship after you found it." This was the first time he mentioned what I knew he knew. "A very minor difficulty, sir," I said. "For your information, Warner Joel saw the entire episode on the television screens in the control room. You were in view most of the time. It looked as if your safety line broke." "It became disengaged, sir," I replied. "Disengaged? How did that happen?" "I don't know," I said. "And, as you recall, I had a short supply of oxygen in my tank. I used Grover's tank to jet to the ship." He scowled at me in disapproval. "You call that a minor difficulty?" His hand, I noticed, was on the butt of the dart pistol, but he made no move to draw it. "I survived," I said, keeping my face noncommittal. "Then you wouldn't consider a difficulty serious unless you did not survive it?" Was it my imagination or was he deliberately toying with me? "Most serious, sir," He thought for a moment. "From now on, Drake, you will avoid dangerous tasks. You are slightly accident prone and you might get into serious difficulties, which would not be in the best interests of our mission. I need a full crew to do our work on Mars." "Thank you, sir," I said. "You may go." I returned to the main cabin, realizing that Spartan had spoken plainly enough. He knew that I knew he'd tried to kill me and he was now granting me a reprieve, probably because he figured he might need an extra pair of hands on Mars. However, he had warned me--if I wasn't a good boy, he might change his mind and decide I was expendable. _Chapter 11_ We were a mere million miles from Mars, traveling at the comparatively snail-like speed of 12,000 miles an hour--a shade over the escape velocity on Mars' surface--when Spartan made his next move. He announced over the intercom that a serious accident had occurred. The air-lock doors had become unfastened in some mysterious fashion and ten previous gallons of waste water which was being distilled for irrigation purposes for the garden had escaped as steam. "It will be absolutely necessary for us to find water on Mars," he added. "Otherwise only half our crew, maybe only two of us, will be able to return to the earth. That is all."