when it was connected, I must be near
it, to persuade its duty-man to fire it on Miko. With this done we
would have more time to plan our other tasks. I did not think Potan
would be ready for his attack before another time of sleep here in the
ship's routine. Things would be quieter then--I would watch my chance
to send a signal to Earth, and then we would escape.

With my thoughts roving, we had been standing quietly at the cubby
door-oval for perhaps fifteen minutes. My hand in my side pouch
clutched the little bullet projector. The brigands had taken it from
me and given it to Potan. He had placed it on the settle with my
Erentz suit; and when we gained his confidence he had forgotten it
and left it there. I had it now, and the feel of its cool sleek handle
gave me a measure of comfort. Things could go wrong so easily--but if
they did, I was determined to sell my life as dearly as possible. And
a vague thought was in my mind: I must not use the last bullet. That
would be for Anita.

I shook myself free from such sinister fancy.

"That electronic projector is remote-controlled. Look, Anita--that's
the signal room over us. The giant projector will be aimed and fired
from up there."

It seemed so. A thirty-foot skeleton tower stood on the deck near us,
with a spiral ladder leading up to a small square steel cubby at the
top. Through the cubby window-ovals I could see instrument panels. A
single Martian was up there; he had called down to Potan concerning
the electronic projector.

* * * * *

The roof of this little tower room was close under the dome--a space
of no more than four feet. A pressure lock-exit in the dome was up
there, with a few steps leading up to it from the roof of the tower
signal-room. We could escape that way, perhaps. In the event of dire
necessity it might be possible. But only as a desperate resort, for it
would put us on the top of the glassite dome, with a sheer hundred
feet or more down its sleek bulging exterior side, and down the
outside bulge of the ship's hull, to the rocks below. There might be a
spider ladder outside leading downward, but I saw no evidence of it.
If Anita and I were forced to escape that way, I wondered how we could
manage a hundred foot jump to the rocks and land safely. Even with the
slight gravity of the Moon it would be a dangerous fall.

"You are Gregg Haljan?"

I started as one of the brigands, coming up behind us, addressed