/> Johnny's trousers flapping behind him, saw Tom's figure flit past

another grill up ahead, and plunged doggedly on.



It was amazingly hard to move quietly. Even in stocking feet they made a

soft thud with each footfall.



But there was no sign of detection, no sound of alarm. Finally they came

out into a large shaft which allowed them to stand upright, and they

stopped to catch their breath.



"Main tube to the living quarters," Tom said when they had caught up to

him. "Joins with the lower-level tube by a series of chutes. We've

actually been circumnavigating the ship ... I wanted to get as far away

from that lounge compartment as possible, in case they check up on you

right away."



"We can't have much time," Johnny said. "That second guard must have

been coming to relieve the other, and when the first one doesn't report

back, they'll smell something fishy."



* * * * *



They talked it over for a moment. Johnny had been careful to leave the

hatchway into the corridor ajar before he climbed into the ventilator

shaft, and then he had pulled the shaft snugly into place behind him.

Anyone who came would find two unconscious guards, a burnt-out hole in

the wall, and the door unlocked.



"We'll hope that he takes things at face value, and assumes we're at

large in the ship somewhere, for a while at least," Johnny said. "That

hole in the wall is going to set them back a couple of steps, too."



"But they'll sound the alarm, at least," Tom said.



"You bet they will! They'll have every man on the crew shaking down the

ship for us. But they may not think of the ventilators until they can't

find us anywhere else."



"But sooner or later they're bound to think of it."



"That's true," Johnny said. "Unless they keep seeing us in the ship. The

way I figure it, this crew has been on battle stations plenty of times.

They'll be able to search the whole ship in half an hour. We're just

going to have to show ourselves ... at least enough to keep them

searching."



"Well, what if they do think of the ventilators?" Greg said. "They'd

still have a time finding us."



"Maybe, but don't underestimate Tawney. He might just mask up his crew

and flood the tubes with cyanide."



They thought about that for a minute. There was no sound here but their

own breathing, and the low chug-chug-chug of the pumps somewhere deep in

the ship. Momentarily they expected to hear the raucous clang of the

alarm bell, as some crew member or another walked into the lounge and

found them gone. But so far there was no sign they had been discovered

missing. "No," Johnny said finally, "if we just hide out in here, and

hope for a chance at one of the scout ships, they'll find us eventually.

But we've got three big advantages, if we can figure out how to use

them. That fancy gun, for one. A way to get around the ship, for

another ... and the fact that there's one more of us than they count on."

He flipped on his pocket flash, began drawing lines on the dusty floor of

the shaft. "My idea is to keep them so busy fighting little fires that

they won't have a chance to worry about where the big one is."



He drew a rough outline-sketch of the organization of the ship. "This

look right to you, from what you've seen?" he asked Tom.



"Pretty much," Tom said. "There are more connecting tubes."



"All the better. We want to get the generators with our little toy here

first. That'll darken the ship, and put the blowers out of commission in

case they think of using gas. Also, it will cut out their computers and

missile-launching rigs, which might give us a chance to get a scout-ship

away in one piece if we could get aboard one."



"All right, the generators are first," Tom said. "But then what? There

are four hundred men on this ship. They'll have every airlock triple

guarded. They'll block us for sure."



"Not when we get through, they won't," Johnny grinned. "We've got an old

friend aboard who's going to help us."



"Friend?"



"Ever hear of panic?" Johnny said. "Just listen a minute."



Quickly then, he outlined his plan. Tom and Greg listened, watched

Johnny make marks with his finger in the dust. When he finished, Greg

whistled softly. "You missed your life work," he said. "You should have

gone into crime."



"If I'd had a ghost to help me, I might have," Johnny said.



"It's perfect," Tom said, "if it works. But it all depends on one

thing ... keeping it rolling after we start...."



For another five minutes they went over the details. Then Johnny clapped

them each on the shoulder. "It's up to you two," he said. "Let's go."



They moved down the large shaft to the place where it broke into several

spurs. Johnny started down the chute toward the engine rooms; Tom and

Greg headed in opposite directions toward the main body of the ship.

Just as they broke up, they heard a muffled metallic sound from the

nearest compartment grill.



It was the clang-clang-clang of the orbit-ship's general alarm.



* * * * *



Crewmen stopped with food halfway to their mouths, jerked away from

tables. Orders buzzed along a dozen wires, and section chiefs began

reporting their battle-stations alert and ready. Finally Tawney snapped

on the general public address system speaker. "Now get this," he roared.

"I want every inch of this ship searched ... every corridor, every

compartment. I want a special crew standing by for missile launching.

I want double guards at every airlock. If they get a ship away from

here, the man who lets them through had better be dead when I find

him...." He broke off, clutching the speaker until his voice was under

control again. "All right, move. They're armed, but there's no place they

can go. Find them."



A section-chief came back over the speaker. "Dead or alive, boss?"



"Alive, you idiot! At least the Hunter brat. I'll take the other one any

way you can get him."



He switched off, and waited, pacing the control cabin like a caged

animal. Ten minutes later a buzzer sounded. "Hydroponics, boss. All

clear."



"No sign of them?"



"Nothing."



Another buzz. "Number seven ore hold. Nothing here."



Still another buzz. "Crew's quarters. Nothing, boss."



One by one the reports came in. Fuming, Tawney checked off the sections,

watched the net draw tighter throughout the ship. They were somewhere,

they had to be....



But nobody seemed to find them.



He was buzzing for his first mate when the power went off. The lights

went out, the speaker went dead in his hand. The computers sighed

contentedly and stopped computing. Abruptly the emergency circuits went

into operation, flooding the darkness with harsh white lights. The

intercom started buzzing again.



"Engine room, boss."



"What happened down there?" Tawney roared.



The man sounded like he'd just run the mile. "Generators," he panted.

"Blown out."



"Well, get somebody in there to fix them. Have a crew seal off the

area...."



"Can't, boss. Fix them, I mean."



"Why not? What have we got electricians for?"



"There's nothing left to fix. The generators aren't wrecked ... they're

demolished...."



"Then get the pair that did it...."



"They're not here. We've been sealed up tight. There's no way anybody

could have gotten in here...."



After that, things began to get confusing.



* * * * *



For a while Merrill Tawney thought that his crew was going crazy ... and

then he began to wonder if he were the one who was losing his mind.



Whatever the case, Merrill Tawney was certain of one thing. The things

that were happening on his orbit-ship could not possibly be happening.



A guard in one of the outer shell storage holds called in with a

disquieting report. Greg Hunter, it seemed, had just been spotted

vanishing into one of the storage compartments from the main outer-shell

corridor. When the guard had broken through the jammed hatchway to

collar his trapped victim, there was no sign of the victim anywhere

around.



At the same moment, a report came in from a guard on the opposite side

of the ship. He had just spotted Greg Hunter there, it seemed, moving

down a spur corridor. The guard had held his fire (according to Tawney's

orders) and summoned help to corner the quarry ... but when help

arrived, the quarry had vanished.



* * * * *



Five minutes later the Hunter boy was discovered in the Hydroponics

section, busily reducing all the yeast vats to shambles with a curious

weapon that seemed to eat holes in things. It ate the deck out from

under the guard's feet, sending him plunging through the floor into the

galley. By the time he had scrambled back again, the Hunter boy was

gone, and a rapid move to seal off the region failed to turn him up

again. The guard was upset; Tawney was a great deal more upset, because

at the time Greg Hunter was (reportedly) playing havoc with the

yeast-vats in Hydroponics he was also (reportedly) knocking guards down

like ten-pins in the main corridor off the engine room while

reinforcements tried to pin him down with a wide-beam stunner....



Quite suddenly emergency circuits closed and lights flashed in the

control cabin, the special signal for a meteor-collision with the outer

shell in No. 3 hold. Tawney signalled for the section chief frantically.

"What's happening down there?"



"I can't talk," the section chief gasped. "Gotta get into a suit, we're

leaking in here...."



"Well, plug up the hole!"



"The hole's four feet wide, sir!" There was a fit of coughing and the

contact broke. The signals for No. 4 hold and No. 5 hold were flashing

now; while the crew members in the vicinity scrambled for pressure suits

someone systematically proceeded to blow holes in No. 9, No. 10 and No.

11 holds....



It was impossible. The reports came in thick and fast. Greg Hunter

was in two places at once, and everywhere he went ... in both

places ... there was a trail of unbelievable destruction. Bulkheads

demolished, gaping holes torn in the outer shell, the air-reconditioning

units smashed beyond repair.... Tawney buzzed for his first mate.



An emergency switch cut into the line, with the frantic voice of a

section chief. Johnny Coombs had been spotted disappearing into the

ventilator shaft in the engine sector. "Well, go in after him!" Tawney

screamed. He got his first mate finally, and snarled orders into the

speaker. "They're in the ventilators. Get a crew in there and stop

them."



But it was dark in the ventilator shafts. No emergency lights in there.

Worse, the crewmen were hearing the things that were being whispered

around the ship. The ventilator shafts yawned menacingly before them;

they went in reluctantly. Once in the dark maze of tunnels,

identification was difficult. Two guards met each other headlong in the

darkness, and put each other out of the fight in a flurry of nervous

stunner-fire. While they searched more of the holds were broken open,

leaking air through gaping rents in the hull....



Tawney felt the panic spreading; he tried to curb it, and it spread in

spite of him. The fugitives were appearing and disappearing like

wraiths. Reports back to control cabin took on a frantic note, confused

and garbled. Now the second-level bulkheads were being attacked. Over a

third of the compartments were leaking precious air into outer space.



When a terrified section chief came through with a report that two Greg

Hunters had been spotted by the same man at the same time, and that the

guards in the sector were shooting at anything that moved, including

other guards, Tawney made his way to the radio cabin and put through a

frantic signal to Jupiter Equilateral headquarters on Mars.



The contact took forever, even with the ship's powerful emergency

boosters. By the time someone at headquarters was reading him, Tawney's

report sounded confused. He was trying for the third time to explain,

clearly and logically, how two men and a ghost were scuttling his

orbit-ship under his very feet when one wall of the cabin vanished in a

crackle of blue fire, and he found himself staring at two Greg Hunters

and a grim-faced Johnny Coombs.



He made squeaky noises into the microphone and dropped it with a crash.

He groped for a chair; Johnny jerked him to his feet again. "A

scout-ship," he said tersely. "Clear it for launching. We want one with

plenty of fuel, and we don't want a single guard anywhere near the

airlock." He picked up an intercom microphone and thrust it into the

little fat man's trembling hand. "Now move! And you'd better be sure

they understand you, because you're coming with us."



Merrill Tawney stared first at Tom, then at Greg, and finally at the

microphone. Then he moved. The orders he gave to his section chiefs were

very clear and concise.



He had never argued with a ghost before, and he didn't care to start

now.



* * * * *



It was over so quickly that it seemed to Tom it had just begun, and if

so much had not been at stake, it might have been fun.



It had been the gun ... the remarkable gun that Roger Hunter had left as

his legacy ... that had been the key. It ate through steel and aluminum

alloy like putty. Whatever its power source, however it worked, by

whatever means it had been built, there had been no match for it on the

orbit-ship.



It had worked ... and that was all that mattered right then.



With it, and with the advantage of a ghost that walked like a

man ... Tom Hunter, to be exact ... they had reduced the Jupiter

Equilateral orbit-ship to a smoking wreck in something less than thirty

minutes.



The signal came back that a scout-ship was ready, unguarded. Johnny

prodded Tawney with the stunner. "You first," he said.



"But where are you taking me?"



"You'll see," Johnny said.



"It was a trick," Tawney said, glaring at Tom. "They told me they shot

your ship to pieces...."



"The ship, yes," Tom said. "Not me."



"Well ... well, that's good, that's good," Tawney said quickly. He

turned to Greg. "You don't have to take me back ... the bargain is still

good...."



"Move," Johnny Coombs said.



With Tawney between them, Greg and Tom marched down the corridor toward

the airlock, with Johnny bringing up the rear. No one stopped them. No

one even came near them. One crewman stumbled on them in the corridor;

he saw Tawney with a gun in his back, and fled in terror.



They found the scout-ship, and strapped Tawney down to an accelleration

bunk, binding his hands and feet so he couldn't move. Greg checked the

controls while Tom and Johnny strapped down. A moment later the engines

fired, and the leaking wreck of the orbit-ship fell away, dwindling and

disappearing in the blackness of space.



It was a quiet journey. The red dot that was Mars grew larger every

hour. One of the three stayed awake at all times to watch Tawney while

the others slept. During the second rest period, Tom woke up while Greg

was on duty.



"How's our prisoner doing?" Tom asked.



"No problem there, he can barely move. I almost wish he'd try something,

he's too quiet."



It was true. Tawney had recovered from his shock ... but rather than

grow more worried as Mars grew large on the screen, he seemed to become

more cheerful by the minute. "He doesn't seem very worried, does he?"

Tom said.



"No, and it doesn't quite add. We've got enough on him to get Jupiter

Equilateral pushed right out of the Belt."



"I'd still feel better if we had the whole picture for the Major," Tom

said. "We still don't know what Dad found, or where he hid it...."



The uneasiness grew. Tawney ignored them, staring at the image of the

red planet on the viewscreen almost eagerly. Then, eight hours out of

Sun Lake City a U.N. Patrol ship appeared, moving toward them swiftly.

"Intercepting orbit," Greg said. "Looks like they were waiting for us."



They watched as the big ship moved in to tangential orbit, matching its

speed to theirs. Then Greg snapped the communicator switch. "Sound off,"

he said cheerfully. "We've got a prize for you."



"Stand by, we're boarding you," the Patrol sent back. "And put your

weapons aside."



Four scooters broke from the side of the Patrol ship. Greg activated the

airlock. Five minutes later a man in Patrol uniform with captain's bars

stepped into the control cabin, a stunner on ready in his hand. Three

Patrolmen came in behind him.



The captain looked around the cabin, then saw Tawney, and took a deep

breath. "Well, thank the stars you're safe at any rate. Pete, Jimmy,

take the controls."



"Hold on," Greg said. "We don't need a pilot."



The Captain looked at him. "Sorry, but we're taking you in. There won't

be any trouble unless you make it. You three are under arrest, and I'm

authorized to make it stick if I have to. I suggest you just cooperate."



They stared at him. Then Johnny said, "What are the charges?"



"You ought to know," the Captain said. "We have a formal complaint from

the main offices of Jupiter Equilateral, charging you with piracy,

murder, kidnapping of a company official, and totally wrecking a company

orbit ship. I don't quite see how you managed it, but we're going to

find out in short order."



There was a stunned silence in the cabin, and then a sound came from the

rear of the cabin.



Merrill Tawney was laughing.