* * * * * In spite of the iron control which had kept her face impassive, Gret Helmuth gasped. "Do you think we can evade the planet-mounteds by that means?" she asked, her outlander accent very apparent. He shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe. They won't be able to shoot even if they track us both all the way to the Heaviside because they won't know which one is us. But when we hit Heaviside, they'll know--our ship will be pushing 20 G's and the liner a miserable four. We should be out of their range by then, though. However, don't count on it too much--we'll have every DIC warship in the system on our tail and we may have to fight yet." He turned and disappeared up the little passage-way. In the control room Pell wriggled awkwardly into the ungainly shock suit that would enable him to live during tremendous accelerations. Squeezing in behind the massive board, he seated himself in the throne-like shock chair and flipped on the inter-com. "Pell to waist ... can you hear me?" "Gotcha," the voice of Heintz came over. "We're ready." "Are the blasters on this tub armed, Heintz?" "Yeah. Armed 'em myself this afternoon." "Cross your fingers ... Pell out." Briefly the electros shrieked up the scale to inaudibility followed by the muffled, reluctant keening of the converter. Pell looked through the forward plastine observation shield. The liner was also warming up its converters; occasionally a shower of red-hot cinders flew out of the blast pit as the pilot gunned his converters. Any minute now ... there it was! Slowly the huge liner wallowed from its elevated cradle cushioned on a pillar of blue flame. Pell opened his own feed valves a trifle and his primitive converter responded nicely, thrusting the Mark III out of its cradle and up after the passenger liner. Slowly Pell advanced the feed, trying to match the liner's lift. Presently he lost sight of the liner as its speed mounted, but he was familiar with the trajectory it used and he followed it at four G's. His vizer light was blinking an angry red. He flipped it on and the corpulent, blotched face of a petty official blossomed out of the gray nothingness of the screen. "What is the meaning of this outrage?" he blustered at Pell. "If you do not decelerate at once, I shall order the planet-mounteds to fire on you!" Pell tried to force a blank look on his face. "What do you mean, sir? This is a DIC passenger liner headed for Mars. Didn't we pass the Geiger Check?" The official looked sick. Then his face became an enraged, mottled red. "If you think you can get away with this...." he sputtered. Pell laughed at him and flipped the vizer off. He looked at his instruments ... another minute now. The back of his shoulders crawled as he contemplated the unpleasant possibility of a planet-mounted blaster burning the little ship to a cinder. Over his vizi-phone he heard the official trying to contact the liner. Again he looked quickly at his instruments. _Now!_