her."

"Yes," nodded Correy, "we'll be there in a couple of days. And we'll
be rid of her, I hope. But--suppose it should be serious, sir?"

"What do you mean?" I asked sharply. I had been thinking, rather
vaguely, along much the same lines, but to hear it put into words came
as rather a shock.

"I hope I'm wrong," said Correy very gravely. "But this Liane is an
unusual woman. When I was his age, I could have slipped rather badly
myself. Her eyes--that slow smile--they do things to a man.

"At the same time, Liane is supposed to be the head of the thing we're
to stamp out; you might say the enemy's leader. And it wouldn't be a
good thing, sir, to have a--a friend of the enemy on board the
_Ertak_, would it?"

A rebuke rose to my lips, but I checked it. After all, Correy had no
more than put into words some fears which had been harassing me.

* * * * *

A traitor--in the Service? Perhaps you won't be able to understand
just what that thought meant to those of us who wore the Blue and
Silver in those days. But a traitor was something we had never had. It
was almost unbelievable that such a thing would ever happen; that it
could ever happen. And yet older men than Hendricks had thrown honor
aside at the insistence of women less fascinating than Liane.

I had felt the lure of her personality; there was not one of us on
board the _Ertak_ who had not. And she had not exercised her wiles on
any of us save Hendricks; with the shrewdness which had made her the
leader she was, she had elected to fascinate the youngest, the
weakest, the most impressionable.

"I'll have a talk with him, Mr. Correy," I said quietly. "Probably it
isn't necessary; I trust him implicitly, as I am sure you do, and the
rest of us."

"Certainly, sir," Correy replied hastily, evidently relieved by the
manner in which I had taken his remarks. "Only, he's very young, sir,
and Liane is a very fascinating creature."

I kept my promise to Correy the next time Hendricks was on watch.

"We'll be setting down in a couple of days," I commented casually.
"It'll be good to stretch our legs again, won't it?"

"It certainly will, sir."

"And I imagine that's the last we'll see of our fair stowaway," I
said, watching him closely.

Hendricks' face flushed and then drained white. With the tip of his
forefinger he traced meaningless geometrical patterns on the surface
of the instrument table.

"I imagine so, sir," he rep