tauri VI and hoping to buy a fast passage on a small vessel for
business reasons. He had been free and ready with his money, leading
Tremont to consider cutting his own expenses on the charter.

It seemed, on the face of it, that the three of them had never met
until the _Annabel_ lifted.

"But they had, all right!" Tremont told himself. "That was no chance,
anywhere along the line. I've been very neatly highjacked!"

The girl must have trailed him to make sure they picked up the right
man. Braigh had never explained exactly what he was doing on the
satellite; he could have arranged for the assignment of the rocket, or
perhaps of the pilot, when Tremont called. Then they had gathered
around to hitch rides, and had been in control ever since.

Tremont looked at the slowly progressing constellations and cursed
himself. He began to have the feeling that there would be no way out
of this. They would regret pitching him into space in such an offhand
manner, he reminded himself, when they opened his case. It would be
too late as far as he was concerned.

_Come to think of it_, he considered, _that Braigh looks pretty smart,
under that idiot-kid pose. He might just break my code, given time.
And the parts made up of model photos or drawings he can sell almost
as is._

When he came to think of it, Tremont was surprised that no one had
tried the same racket before. He had laid out a fortune for what the
three thieves were stealing from him.

He drew in his left arm again and raised the wrist to the neck of his
helmet. By looking down his nose, he discovered to his surprise that
he had been out nearly an hour. He had wasted more time than he
thought in reviewing his earlier encounters with Dorothy aboard the
starship and the others at the spaceport.

He raised the water tube to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful. The
taste was stale.

_I could do with a beer, if this is the way I'm going out_, he
thought. _They can joke all they want about dying in bed after
traveling to the stars; but you could order a beer even if it killed
you._

It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted as
being a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it, and
discovered after a few moments that it was growing brighter. It
continued to do so for half an hour.

"It might be another ship!" he breathed, then he began to shout,
"Mayday! Mayday!" over his radio.

He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even af