The helmet phones had given him an idea. He held his breath, listening. He heard the faint clicks of Tarnuff's shoes as he moved along on the opposite side. He seemed to be moving toward the bow. Then Ron heard a different click, as Tarnuff shut off his phone. Ron chuckled as he reached up and shut off his own. He was sure Tarnuff had done that deliberately, and probably was reversing his direction and moving sternward now. Ron didn't move at all for a minute. He clung there lightly, peering up along the sweeping curve of the hull above his head, ready to use his pistol if Tarnuff should appear there. But Tarnuff didn't appear, and Ron thought it likely he wouldn't for awhile. He hadn't forgotten the other's words, "marksmanship is not all." One bullet apiece! Probably Tarnuff would try to make him waste his bullet, thus putting Ron at his mercy. That would be the logical thing to do. Keeping this in mind, Ron moved carefully sternward. He held the pistol ready in his hand. Occasionally he peered upward along the curve, alert and ready for anything. He wondered what Tarnuff had in mind. But this wasn't a guessing game, it was far more deadly than that, and he'd have to be very sure before he fired his bullet. But there was still another danger. This hull was his only world now and he was almost weightless. He clung to it fiercely as he inched along, knowing that it wouldn't take much of a shove to send him drifting free, out of its gravity forever. He looked along the straight line of it and saw the faint glow of the rocket blasts. His brain writhed at a sudden horrible thought. Would Tarnuff try to gain the control room again, change the course suddenly and thus shake him off into space? At this thought Ron hurried his progress a little, making for the four parallel side tubes he could see a little distance away. They were the only tubes that weren't blasting, being used only in emergency; they would allow him firmer footage, and maybe it would be a good idea to wait there until Tarnuff came somewhere in sight. As he neared these tubes, something seemed wrong with them. There was something else there--a vague dark blur--between the second and third tubes. Ron stopped suddenly. Could Tarnuff have reached there already? No, that was impossible. He moved forward cautiously, and the blur didn't stir. And then Ron saw what it was. And he was glad he had shut off his helmet phone, for he laughed loudly, a little hysterically, the sound almost bursting his ear-drums inside the helmet. Wedged between those horizontally parallel tubes was Oruk's huge body which Ron had thought he had buried in space! Apparently it had been caught in the gravity of the ship again, and had slid slowly along the hull, luckily right in line with those tubes, to finally come to rest there.