rs, there was
no danger of sudden discovery and arrest in these dark alleys....

His boots had made too much noise as he started out, so he had slipped
them off, hanging them from his belt and moving on in his stocking feet.
As he went from duct to duct, he had an almost ridiculous feeling of
freedom and power. In every sense, he was an invisible man. Not one soul
on this great ship knew he was here, or even suspected. He had the run
of the ship, complete freedom to go wherever he chose. He could move
from compartment to compartment as silently and invisibly as if he had
no substance at all.

* * * * *

He knew the first job was to learn the pattern of the ducts, and
orientation was a problem. He had heard stories of men getting lost in
the deep underground mining tunnels on Mars, wandering in circles for
days until their food gave out and they starved. And there was that
hazard here, for every duct looked like every other one.

But there was a difference here, because the ducts curved just as the
main ship's corridors did. He could always identify the center of the
ship by the force of false gravity pulling the other way. Furthermore,
as the ducts drew closer to the pumps and reconditioning units, they
opened into larger vents, and the noise of the pumps thundered in his
ears. After an hour of exploration, Tom was certain that from any place
in the ship he could at least find his way to the outer layer, and from
there to one of the scout-ship airlocks.

Finding Greg and Johnny was quite a different matter.

He could not see enough through the compartment grills to identify just
what the compartments were; he was forced to rely on what he could hear.
The engine rooms were easily identified. In one area he heard the
banging of pots and pans, the steaming of kettles ... obviously the
galley. He found the control area. He could hear the clatter of typing
instruments, the _click-click-click_ of the computers working out the
orbits and trajectories for the scout-ships as they moved out from the
orbit-ship or came back in. In another compartment he heard a dispatcher
chattering his own special code-language into a microphone in a
low-pitched voice. He passed another grill, and then stopped short as a
familiar voice drifted through.

Merrill Tawney's voice.

Tom hugged the grill, straining to catch the words. The company man
sounded angry; the man he was talking to sounded even angrier.