Jacobs, who was in charge of the job:

"Amigo! How many hours this ship she got?"

Jacobs ran his finger down a chart and discovered to his surprise that the
Astra had only two hundred hours on its log since the last overhaul.
Ordinarily a ship was checked each thousand hours. He scratched his head
but decided that if Operations wanted the Astra tuned it was none of his
business. So he told Gomez not to ask useless questions and to get back in
the tube.

Anyone else but Gomez would have obeyed orders and forgotten all about it.
Ten minutes later Jacobs saw Armando's head appear.

"Amigo!" Gomez shouted. "How many hours?"

"Two hundred!" Jacobs shouted back, knowing he would have no peace until
Gomez was answered. "Now get to work! We ain't got all year."

But Gomez was out of the tube again in five minutes and yelling for the
foreman.

"What do you want now?" Jacobs demanded. He swung himself up on the catwalk
beside Gomez.

"Something very funny in here, amigo," Gomez replied. "One plate she is too
clean."

"Less work for you," Jacobs grunted. "So why complain?"

Nevertheless he took a look at the plate, which was near the mouth of the
tube. It should have been lightly encrusted with the oxides of rocket fuel.
Instead, it was only beginning to dull, in strange contrast to its
neighbors which were welded to it.

"That is queer," Jacobs muttered.

"_Si._ As you say, amigo. Queer."

Once Jacob's interest was aroused he was also not one to let a matter drop;
he told Gomez to work on another tube while he consulted the front office.
The front office was not especially interested, but at Jacobs' insistence
they called in a metallurgist. The metallurgist, whose name was Britton,
was fortunately a thorough young man. He ordered the plate removed and sent
to his laboratory for complete analysis.

After that things happened fast. Britton scanned the analysis of the plate
and without hesitation called in his superior who ordered a second test
just to be safe, and then notified Washington. Washington turned it over to
Interplanetary Intelligence, of which Carson was chief of staff.

One week later Ben Sessions stood before Carson's desk.

* * * * *

Sessions was only thirty-five, but in his few years with "Two Eyes," as the
organization was known, he had rung up an enviable record. Tall, lithe,
darkly handsome, he was well liked by the men who worked with him. At the
moment there