Preston smiled. "Quite a character, isn't he? Normally he's a Forest Ranger. At the moment he's on loan to me, serving as my outside security officer. He did a good piece of work, getting that license number. We'll hand it to the FBI bureau in Las Vegas and they'll take it from there." "He must have had advance information, to be at the right spot to get it," Rick observed. "No more than you had," Preston told him. "We reached the same conclusion that you and Luis Hermosa did, about how stolen goods could get off the base. We've been watching from the inside, and Deadrock has been watching at the Steamboat end." "Then you already knew about Mac and Pancho leaving last night," Scotty stated. "Yes. But we really don't know any more than you two have found out. We're no closer to finding out who sabotaged the rockets--or who stole the transistors and the servomotors." "What?" the boys exclaimed in unison. Tom Preston's eyebrows went up. "You haven't heard? But of course you haven't, because you weren't here when we finished inventory. We're missing ninety thousand dollars' worth of servomotors." "Suffering spacefish!" Rick groaned. Scotty asked quickly, "When did it happen?" "During the Orion shoot. Project Cetus had drawn servos the day before, and they were on the shelves then." "The stock clerks . . ." Rick began. "Ran out to see Orion," Colonel Preston finished. "They've gone out to see every shoot since the first one. But all of them swear no unauthorized personnel got into the warehouses. Of course they can't be sure, because none of them kept eyes on the doors." "Could any of the clerks be in on the thefts?" Scotty asked. "If so, we have no evidence of it. But we have so little evidence it doesn't count for much anyway. Of course we have some ideas, and I suppose you do, too." Rick and Scotty nodded. Preston continued, "The thing that's clear to us is that there isn't just an Earthman. There's a gang. Someone sabotages the rockets. Someone else steals the stuff from the warehouse. Someone else--and it looks like Mac and Pancho--takes the stuff to Careless Mesa, or Steamboat, or both. And someone else--the gang that captured you--gets it at Steamboat and takes it to Vegas. Then, I suppose, still another man or group gets rid of it through trade channels." John Gordon had been listening without comment. Now he spoke up. "The pattern seems to indicate sabotage, in order to create a diversion for thieves. I can't buy it." The boys and Preston waited for his reason. "The thefts are peanuts. Oh, not in terms of ordinary thefts. But it doesn't seem reasonable that anyone, no matter how greedy or crooked, would destroy ten million dollars' worth of rocket to steal goods only a tiny fraction of that in value."