to you
again, I'll call for you. Now blast off, Lieutenant, and rake that
radiation. Rake it clean."

Rip forced a bright and friendly smile. "Yes, sir," he said sweetly.
"We'll rake it so clean you can see your face in it, sir." He paused, then
added politely, "If you don't mind looking at your face, sir--to see how
clean the tubes are, I mean."

Rip turned and got out of there.

Koa was waiting in the passageway outside. Rip told him what had happened,
mimicking O'Brine's Irish accent.

The sergeant-major shook his head sadly. "This is what I meant,
Lieutenant. Cruisers don't clean their tubes more'n once in ten
accelerations. The commander is just thinking up dirty work for us to do,
like I said."

"Never mind," Rip told him. "Let's find our squadroom and get settled,
then draw some protective clothing and equipment. We'll clean his tubes
for him. Our turn will come later."

He remembered the last thing Joe Barris had said, only a few hours before.
Joe was right, he thought. To ourselves we're supermen, but to the
spacemen we're just simps. Evidently O'Brine was the kind of space officer
who ate Planeteers for breakfast.

Rip thought of the way the commander had turned red with rage at that
crack about his face, and resolved, "He may eat me for breakfast, but I'll
try to be a good, tough mouthful!"

CHAPTER THREE - CAPTURE AND DRIVE!

Commander O'Brine had not exaggerated. The residue of carbon and thorium
on the blast tube walls was stubborn, dirty, and penetrating. It was caked
on in a solid sheet, but when scraped, it broke up into fine powder.

The Planeteers wore coveralls, gloves, and face masks with respirators,
but that didn't prevent the stuff from sifting through onto their bodies.
Rip, who directed the work and kept track of the radiation with a
gamma-beta ion chamber and an alpha proportional counter, knew they would
have to undergo personal decontamination.

He took a reading on the ion chamber. Only a few milliroentgens of beta
and gamma radiation. That was the dangerous kind, because both beta
particles and gamma rays could penetrate clothing and skin. But the
Planeteers wouldn't get enough of a dose to do any harm at all. The alpha
count was high, but so long as they didn't breathe any of the dust it was
not dangerous.

The _Scorpius_ had six tubes. Rip divided the Planeteers into two squads,
one under his direction and one under Koa's. Each tube took a couple of
hours' hard