The President had issued his commands earlier that morning. A secret communication had been issued to the commanding officers of all the bases of Space Command. A similar message had been sent to the heads of large commercial enterprises such as Starlight Enterprise and Nolan Mining Enterprise, as well as the local authorities of population centers in the Asteroid Belt and on Mars. The communication had provided what information was known about the threat that the pirates manifested. It ordered Space Command and urged the private parties to keep the information secret so as to avoid panic and to prevent the pirates from learning that their sheathing apparatus had been observed in action, and advised all parties to prepare for any attack the pirates may launch. They were put on high alert for visual attack and to be ready for instant defensive response. In Amundsen City, Keith Seaton sat at his desk, scanning the Asteroid Belt with his telescope. His strong build filled the chair in which he sat. “There’s Ceres,” he said quietly as the image of the Belt’s largest asteroid came up on the screen. Charlie Taylor and Allen Foster, who were sitting next to him, nodded. The fathers of the three Starmen weren’t conversing much that night, but all were greatly comforted by each other’s presence. On Ceres, Sim Sala Bim received the encrypted message on tight beam, and felt immense sadness come over him as he read it. “Where are those three young Starmen now?” he wondered. In the laboratories of Starlight Enterprise’s main center on the Moon, scientists were working around the clock to devise a method by which their ships could track distant objects by sight instead of radar. Additionally, under a very rare Presidential command, technicians were working frantically under Earth’s pre-eminent astrophysicist, Stephen Hoshino, trying to devise an advanced means of detecting a ship that was invisible to radar. The Inner Planetary system was waiting for a strike which its defenders knew would surely come--but not when, where, or how. 8: The Starmen Strike! ALMOST an hour had gone by since George St. George had begun to tell the three Starmen what he knew of the asteroid. Zip, Mark, and Joe had listened intently, plying the asteroid miner with detailed questions as he continued his narrative. At last, no one had anything else to say. “No more questions?” Zip asked. Both Joe and Mark shook their heads. Their energy level had gone up appreciably since they had sat down with George. They had become spirited, now that they were determined to find a plan of escape. “All right, then. It seems to me that this may be easier than we thought,” stated Zip. “You have an idea already?” asked Joe, with a slight turn of his head. “It seems obvious that this asteroid was not intended to house prisoners. This room we’re in is not a cell block--it’s a dormitory.”