It smelled like a submarine, of oil and metal and canned air. There was a man in an odd-looking coverall who stared at him and spoke to Kara. He heard Kara explaining, and in the meanwhile the lock door behind him was grinding shut and locking itself with relentless precision. Kara said, "This is Thile. He commands the ship." Birrel shook hands with him. He was a small lean man with very keen eyes and a hard competent jaw. "So Holmer and Rett are both dead," he said, with grim regret. "Well, we'll make Vannevan pay for them. Help him strap in, Kara. We're taking off at once." He looked at Birrel. "If we can get back to Ruun without delay, you may be able to convince our sheeplike leaders in time. I hope so." He hurried away somewhere forward--or up. Kara took Birrel into a small cabin where there were several padded couches, and helped him secure himself with broad webbing straps. "Scared?" "Not a bit." "Liar. Don't worry about it. The first take-off is always the worst." She leaned over impulsively and kissed him, ludicrously like a mother tucking a fretful child into bed. The ship suddenly gave a great roar and a quiver, and a raucous horn began to sound. She scrambled into the couch next to his. Birrel's heart pounded wildly and the blood in his veins turned cold and thin as water. There was noise. A stunning, deafening crescendo of it. Then there was a feeling of motion. He lay on the top of a rising piston that pressed him slowly and relentlessly against air compressed into a smaller and smaller space. He opened his mouth and yelled in panic fear, seeing himself crushed into a flattened pulp. The cry was lost in the bursting roar that enveloped the ship. Ages passed. And then miraculously the pressure eased and finally was gone. Thile's voice came suddenly from a speaker in the wall. "Trouble, Kara. Radar says another ship has taken off from Earth, right behind us." Birrel heard her quick, fierce exclamation. "So Vannevan was watching his radar for our take-off. I knew he'd never let us get back to Ruun if he could help it!" CHAPTER VII They were all in the ship's bridge now. Thile and Kara and a young man named Vray were conferring tensely with the radarman and checking a bristling array of instruments. Birrel was looking at space.