probably sight it as we descend."

There was no trajectory needed. We were almost over Archimedes now. I
could drop us with a visible, instrumental course. My mind was whirling
with a confusion of thoughts. What could we do? What could we dare
attempt to do? I met Snap's gaze.

"Ring us down, Gregg," he said quietly.

I nodded. I pushed Moa's weapon away. "You don't need that. I obey
orders."

* * * * *

We went to the turret. Moa watched me and Snap, a grim, cold Amazon. She
avoided looking at Anita, whom Miko helped down the ladders with a
strange mixture of courtierlike grace and amused irony. Coniston gazed
at Anita with falling jaw.

"I say! Not George Prince? The girl--"

"No time for argument now," Miko commanded. "It's the girl, masquerading
as her brother. Get below, Coniston. Haljan takes us down."

The astounded Englishman continued gazing at Anita. "I mean to say,
where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko? Our
equipment is not ready."

"Of course not. We will land well away. He won't be suspicious--we can
signal him again after we land. We will have time to plan, to assemble
the equipment. Get below, I told you."

The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still holding
Anita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will watch him,
little Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."

I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answer
should have come from below within a second or two. But it did not. Miko
regarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.

"Ring again, Haljan."

I duplicated. No answer. The silence was frightening. Ominous.

Miko muttered, "That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"

I sent the imperative emergency demand.

* * * * *

No answer. A second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled.
Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret: it
came from shifting-room call-grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves
of the plate-shifters in the lower control room. The valves were
opening; the plates automatically shifting into neutral, and
disconnecting!

An instant of startled silence. Miko may have realized the significance
of what had happened. Certainly Snap and I did. The hissing ceased. I
gripped the emergency plate-shifter switch which hung over my head. Its
disc was dead! The plates were dead in neutral. In the posit