/> Greg was pumelling him, pounding him on the back, so excited he couldn't

get a sentence out, and Johnny was hovering over them, incredulous but

forced to believe his eyes, like a father overwhelmed by the impossible

behavior of a pair of unpredictable children. It was a jubilant reunion.

They broke open the cabinets and refrigerator in the back of the lounge

and pulled out surro-ham and rolls, while Johnny got some coffee going.

Tom was so famished he could hardly wait to make sandwiches of the ham.

He ate it as fast as he got it.



But finally he slowed up, got his mouth empty enough to talk. "All

right, let's have the story," Greg said, still looking as though he

couldn't believe his eyes. "The last we saw, you were blown into atoms

out there in that Scavenger ... you've got some nerve turning up now

and scaring us half out of our skins...."



"You want me to go back in my hole?"



"Just sit still and talk!"



Tom told them, then, starting from the beginning.



Through it all Greg stared in admiration. "We've got a genius among us,

that's all," he said finally. "And I always thought you were the timid

one...."



"But what else could I do?" Tom said. "You know what they say about

grabbing a tiger by the tail ... once you get hold, you've got to hold

on."



"Okay," Greg said, "but the next time I make a crack about your retiring

nature, remind me to stick my foot in my mouth."



"I'll do it for him," Johnny Coombs rumbled.



Tom nodded toward the open grill. "The only thing I don't see is how you

knew I was back there."



Johnny grinned. "We were busy taking down the grill when you came

along. We'd found three microphones in this place, and figured they

might have one behind the grill. And then we heard somebody breathing

back there ... we thought they'd posted a guard back there, just to snoop

us."



"Well, I'm glad you didn't hit him any harder...."



Johnny started to say something, then stopped, cocked his head toward

the door. There were footsteps in the corridor outside; they came

closer, stopped by the door. "Quick," Johnny hissed, "back inside!"



There was no time to look for other concealment. Tom leaped across the

room, jumped up into the shaft again, and Greg slammed the grate up into

place just as the hatchway door swung open.



Merrill Tawney walked into the room, with two burly guards behind him.



* * * * *



For the first few seconds, Greg was certain that they were lost. He

stood with his back to the ventilator grill, frozen in his tracks as the

fat little company man came in the room. He tried to keep his face

blank, but he knew he wasn't succeeding. He saw the puzzled frown form

on Tawney's face.



The company man motioned the guards into the room, peered suspiciously

at Greg and Johnny. "Am I interrupting something, by any chance?"



"Nothing at all," Johnny blurted. "We were just talking."



"Talking." Tawney repeated the word as if it were some strange language

he didn't quite understand. He looked at the guard. "Let's just check

them."



While one guard patted down their clothes, the other withdrew a stunner,

held it on ready. Tawney prowled the lounge. He glanced at the food on

the table, then reached under the chair cushion and withdrew the

disconnected microphone, looked at the loose wires, and tossed it aside.



"They're clean," the guard said.



Tawney's face was a study of uneasiness, but he clearly could not

pinpoint what the trouble was. Finally he shrugged, turned on the smile

again, although his eyes remained watchful. "Well, maybe you won't mind

if I join in the talking for a while," he said. "You've been

comfortable? No complaints?"



"No complaints," Greg said.



"Then I presume we're ready to talk business." He looked at Greg.



"You said you were ready to bargain," Greg said, "but I haven't heard

any terms yet."



"Terms? Very simple. You direct us to the lode, we give you half of

everything we realize from it," Tawney said, smiling.



"You mean you'll write us a contract? With a U.N. witness to it?"



"Well, hardly ... under the circumstances. I'm afraid you'll have to

take our word."



Greg looked at the company man, and shook his head. "Not that I don't

trust you," he said, "but I'm afraid I can't give you what you want,"

Greg said.



"Why not?"



"Because I don't know where Dad made his strike."



The company man's face darkened. "Somebody knows where it is. Your

father would never have found something like that without telling his

own sons...."



"Sorry," Greg said. "Of course, I can tell you where you can find out,

if you want to go look."



"We've already searched his records...."



"Some of his records," Greg said. "Not all of them. There was a

compartment behind the main control panel in Dad's orbit-ship. Dad used

it to store deeds, claims, other important papers. There was a packet of

notes in there before your men fired on the ship. But of course, maybe

you searched more thoroughly, the second time."



Tawney stared at him for a moment, then at Johnny. Johnny Coombs

shrugged his shoulders solemnly, and shook his head. Without a word, the

little company man walked to the intercom speaker on the wall. He spoke

sharply into it, waited, then had a brief, pungent conversation with

someone. Then he turned back to Greg, his face heavy with suspicion.

"You saw these papers?"



"Certainly I saw them. I didn't have time to read them through, but what

else could they be?"



"Let me warn you," Tawney said coldly, "if I send a crew out there on a

wild goose chase, the party will be over when they get back, do you

understand? You've been given every consideration. If this is a fool's

errand, you'll pay for it very dearly." He turned on his heel, snarled

at one of the guards. "I want them watched every minute," he said. "One

of you stay with them constantly. It won't take long to find out if this

is a stall...."



He stalked out, and the hatchway clanged behind him. One guard went

along; the big one with the stunner stayed behind, eyeing his prisoners

unpleasantly. The stunner was in his hand, the safety off.



Johnny Coombs started across the room toward the kitchennette, passing

close to the guard. Suddenly he turned, swung his fist heavily down on

the guard's neck. The stunner crackled, but Greg had jumped aside.

Another blow from Johnny's fist sent the gun flying. Another blow, and

the guard's legs slid out from under him. He fell unconscious to the

floor.



In an instant they were across the room, lifting down the grill, helping

Tom out of his hiding place. "Okay, boy," Johnny said to Greg, "I guess

you pulled the trigger with that story of yours."



"Not me," Greg said. "Tom did. He's the one that showed us the way

out ... the same way he came in."



* * * * *



The guard was out for a while, they made sure of that first. Then there

was a hasty consultation. "The airlocks are guarded," Johnny said, "and

if they tumble to the ventilator shafts, they can smoke us out in no

time. How are we going to get a scout-ship without showing ourselves?

For that matter, how are we going to get a scout-ship away from here

without being blown up the way the Scavenger was blown up?"



"I think I know a way," Tom said. "We have to have something to keep a

lot of the crew busy. If we could get to the ship's generators and put

them out of commission somehow, it might do it."



"Why?" Greg wanted to know.



"Because of the air supply," Tom said. "Without the generators, the fans

won't run. They'll have to get a crew to fix them or they'll suffocate."



"But that would only take a few men," Johnny said. "As soon as

the generators went out, they'd look for us, and if we were

missing ... well, they'd have the whole crew beating the bushes for us.

It wouldn't be long before somebody thought of the ventilators."



"But we've got to do something, and do it fast," Tom said.



"I know." Johnny chewed his lip. "It's a good idea, but we need more

than just the generators. We've got to disable the ship ... throw so

many things at them so fast from so many different directions that they

don't know which way to turn. That means we'd need to split up, and we'd

need weapons." He hefted the guard's Markheim. "One stunner between

three of us isn't enough."



"Well, we have this." Tom unbuckled Roger Hunter's gun case from his

belt. "Dad's revolver. It's not a stunner, but it might help." He tossed

the case to Johnny. "I can give you both a rundown on how the shafts go.

We could plan to meet at a certain spot in a certain length of time...."



He broke off, looking at Johnny. The big miner had taken Roger Hunter's

gun from the case, and hefted it in his hand, started to check it

automatically as Tom talked. But now his hand froze as he stared at the

weapon.



"What's wrong?" Tom asked.



"This gun is wrong," Johnny said. "All wrong. Where did you get this

thing?"



"From Dad's spacer pack, the one the Patrol brought back. The Major gave

it to us in Sun Lake City." Tom peered at the gun. "Is it broken or

something? It's just Dad's revolver...."



"It is, eh?" Johnny turned the gun over in his hand. "Whoever told you

about guns?"



"What's wrong with it?"



There was an odd expression on Johnny's face as he handed the weapon

back to Tom. "Take a look at it," he said. "Tell me whether it's loaded

or not."



Tom looked at it. Except for a few hours on the firing range, he had had

no experience with guns; he couldn't have taken down a Markheim and

reassembled it if his life depended on it. But he had seen his father

take the old revolver out of the leather case many times before.



Now Tom could see that this was not the same gun.



The thing in his hand was large and awkward. The hand-grips didn't fit;

there was no trigger guard, and no trigger. Several inches along the

gleaming metal barrel was a shiny stud, and below it a dial with notches

on it.



"That's funny," Tom said. "I've never seen this thing before."



Greg took it from him, balanced it in his hand. "Doesn't feel right," he

said. "All out of balance."



"Look at the barrel," Johnny said quietly.



Greg looked. There was no hole in the end of the barrel. "This thing's

crazy," he said.



"And then some," Johnny said. "You haven't had this out of the case

since you took it from the pack?"



"Just once," said Tom. "And I put it right back. I hardly looked at it.

Look, maybe it's just a new model Dad got."



"It's no new model. I'm not even sure it's a gun," Johnny said. "Doesn't

feel like a gun."



"What happens when you push the stud here?" Greg asked.



Johnny licked his lips nervously. "Try it," he said.



Greg leveled the thing at the rear wall of the lounge and pressed the

stud. There was a sharp buzzing sound, and a blinding flash of blue

light against the wall. It looked for all the world like the flash of a

live power line shorting out. They squinted at the flash, rubbed their

eyes....



And stared at the wall. Or at what was left of the wall, because most of

the wall was gone. The metal had bellied out in a six-foot hole into the

storage hold beyond....



Johnny Coombs whistled. "This thing did that?" he whispered.



"It must have...."



"But there's no gun ever made that could do that." He walked over to the

hole in the wall. "That's half-inch steel plate. There's no way to pack

that kind of energy into a hand gun."



They stared at the innocent-looking weapon in Greg's hand. "Whatever it

is, Dad must have put it in the gun-case."



"Yes, he must have," Johnny said.



"Well, don't you see what that means? Dad must have found it

somewhere. Somewhere out here in the Belt ... a gun that no man could

have made...."



He took the weapon, ran his finger along the gleaming barrel. "I

wonder," he said, "what else Dad might have found out there."



* * * * *



Somewhere below them they heard a hatch clang shut, and even deeper in

the ship generator motors began throbbing in a steady even rhythm. In

the silence of the lounge they could hear their own breathing, and

outside a thousand tiny sounds of the ship's activity were audible.



But now they had attention only for the odd-shaped piece of metal in

Greg's hand, and for the hole that gaped in the wall.



"You think that this was what Dad found?" Greg said. "The Big Strike

he told Johnny about?"



"It must be part of it," Tom said.



"But what is it? And where did it come from? It doesn't make sense,"

Greg protested.



"It doesn't make sense the way we've been looking at it," Tom said. "All

we've found was some gobbledegook in Dad's private log to tell us what

he found ... but it couldn't have been a vein of ore, or Tawney's men

would have unearthed it. It had to be something else. Something that was

so big and important that Dad didn't even dare let Johnny in on it."



"Yes, that's been the craziest part of it, to me," Johnny said. "I've

done a lot of mining with your Dad. If he'd hit rich ore, he would have

taken me out there to mine it with him. But he didn't. He said it was

something he had to work on alone for a while, and he sent me back."



"As if he'd found something that scared him," Tom said, "or something

that he didn't understand. He was afraid to tell anybody. And whatever

he found, he managed to hide it somewhere, so that nobody would find

it...."



"Then why didn't he hide this part of it, too?" Greg said.



"Maybe to be sure there was some trace left, if anything happened to

him," Tom said.



They were silent for a moment. The only sound was the stertorous

breathing of the unconscious guard. "Well," Greg said finally, "I have

to admit it makes sense. It makes other things add up better, too. Dad

was no fool, he must have known that Tawney was onto something. And Dad

would never have risked his life for an ore strike. He'd either have

made a deal with Tawney or let him hijack the lode, if that was all

there was to it. But there's still one big question ... where did he

hide what he found? And we aren't going to find the answer here." He

walked over to the hole in the wall.



"Made quite a mess of it, didn't it?" Johnny said.



"Looks like it. I wonder what that thing would do to a ship's generator

plant." He turned to Johnny. "We haven't much time. With this thing, we

could tear this ship apart, leave them so confused they'll never know

what broke loose. And if we could get that gun back to Major Briarton,

he'd have to listen to us, and get the U.N. Patrol into the search...."



They had been so intent on their talking that they did not hear the

footsteps in the corridor until the door swung open. It was another

guard, the one who had departed with Tawney. He stopped short, blinking

at his companion on the floor, and then at the gaping hole in the wall.

When he saw the twins, side by side, his jaw sagged and a strangled

sound came from his throat.



Then Johnny grabbed his arm, jerked him into the lounge, and slammed the

hatch shut. Greg pulled the stunner from his holster and tossed it to

Tom. The guard let out a roar, twisted free, and met Johnny's fist as he

came around. He sagged at the knees and slid to the floor beside the

other guard. "All right," Johnny said, "we've dealt the cards, now we'd

better play the hand. Tom, you first."



Tom pulled the ventilator grill down, and climbed up into the shaft.

Greg followed, with Johnny at his heels, pulling the grill back up into

place from the inside. They waited for a moment, but there was no sound

from the lounge.



"All right," Johnny said breathlessly. "Let's move."



Swiftly they started down the dark tunnel.