"I am. You are the survivors?" Jake and his companions bared their guns. "Call your entire crew," said Jake, pressing the muzzle into the captain's side. "I want to see eight men in this room." "Ah," said the captain sadly. "So this is what our mercy stop has let us in for." * * * * * They marched the eight crew members to the ship's air lock. "Get in," said Jake. "Surely it is not necessary for you to kill us," said the captain. "Why don't you set us adrift in a survival unit? Give us a fighting chance." "Space death is such a terrible way to go," said the first mate. "Get in," said Jake. "I haven't said anything about what I was going to do with you." The eight looked at one another, then slowly, apprehensively, entered the air lock. Matt pushed the button closing the inner door. Henry pushed the button opening the outer door. Eight bodies drifted in space. Jake took over the freighter's controls. "You sure you can find your way to Japetus?" Matt queried. "That moon is just a glorified piece of rock." "No trouble at all. Remember when we landed there? I left our ship's radio on, sending out a carrier beam. We'll just follow it in on directional-automatic." "Hey, Jake," said Henry. "How about the cargo? I've been looking over the cargo manifest, and all it says is five thousand carboys of oxygen." "Oxygen?" said Matt, with rising concern. "When we were on Titan you told us this ship contained something very valuable." "Yeah, Jake, what's the story?" "Calm down, you two. This oxygen cargo is the most valuable stuff in the solar system right now." "Aw come on," said Matt. "All you have to do is breathe to get a lung full of it. Is this some joke?" "Eight dead men aren't my idea of a joke," said Henry, a frown crossing his pudgy features. "All right," said Jake. "This was top secret information on Titan. There's been a bad leak in the city dome. They're losing tons of air every day, and so far no one's been able to find the hole." "I didn't hear anything about it when I was there," said Matt. "Of course not. The engineers have kept it from the colonists so there wouldn't be a stampede to get out. Because there aren't nearly enough ships to evacuate everybody." "Then just where do we come in?" asked Henry. Jake shook his head impatiently. "Can't you see? This is an emergency shipment of oxygen for Titan. Their reserves are just about gone. They figured it would take about ten days to check the entire dome, but they've only got about three days' supply of oxygen left." Matt nodded approvingly. "I'm beginning to see it now. When that's gone, they'll pay any price to get more." "You've got it," said Jake. "There's a Federation bank on Titan with assets of thirty million. We'll take every penny." Henry was worried. "Well, what if they find that hole before the three days are up. Then we won't be in such a good bargaining position."