It came when Lee grimaced at him and called the deckhand in a feeble murmur. She continued to murmur so indistinctly that he bent over trying to catch the words. Charles leaned forward and emptied the syringe at one inch range into the taut seat of the deckhand's pants. He scratched absently and said to Lee: "You'll have to talk up, lady." Then he giggled, looked bewildered and collapsed on the floor, staring, coked to the eyebrows. Lee painfully sat up on the bed. "Porthole," she said. Charles went to it and struggled with the locking lugs. It opened--and an alarm bell began to clang through the ship. _Now_ he saw the hair-fine, broken wire. An alarm trip-wire. Feet thundered outside and the glutinous voice of Jimmy Regan was heard: "Wait, you damn fools! You in there--is everything all right? Did they try to pull something?" Charles kept silent and shook his head at the girl. He picked up a chair and stood by the door. The glutinous voice again, in a mumble that didn't carry through--and the door sprang open. Charles brought the chair down in a murderous chop, conscious only that it seemed curiously light. There was an impact and the head fell. It was Regan, with a drawn gun. It had been Regan. His skull was smashed before he knew it. Charles felt as though he had all the time in the world. He picked up the gun to a confused roar like a slowed-down sound track and emptied it into the corridor. It had been a full automatic, but the fifteen shots seemed as well-spaced as a ceremonial salute. Regan, in his vanity, wore two guns. Charles scooped up the other and said to Lee: "Come on." He knew she was following as he raced down the cleared corridor and down the ramp, back to the compartment in which they had been locked. Red danger lights burned on the walls. Charles flipped the pistol to semi-automatic as they passed a red-painted bulkhead with valves and gages sprouting from it. He turned and fired three deliberate shots into it. The last was drowned out by a dull roar as gasoline fumes exploded. Pipe fittings and fragments of plate whizzed about them like bullets as they raced on. Somebody ahead loomed, yelling querulously: "What the hell was that, Mac? What blew?" "Where's the reactor room?" Charles demanded, jamming the pistol into his chest. The man gulped and pointed. "Take me there. Fast." "Now _look_, Mac--" Charles told him in a few incisive details where and how he was going to be shot. The man went white and led them down the corridor and into the reactor room. Three white-coated men with the aloof look of reactor specialists stared at them as they bulled into the spotless chamber. The oldest sniffed: "And what, may I ask, are you crewmen doing in--" Lee slammed the door behind them and said: "Sound the radiation alarm." "Certainly not! You must be the couple we--"