,
watched the net draw tighter throughout the ship. They were somewhere,
they _had_ to be....

But nobody seemed to find them.

He was buzzing for his first mate when the power went off. The lights
went out, the speaker went dead in his hand. The computers sighed
contentedly and stopped computing. Abruptly the emergency circuits went
into operation, flooding the darkness with harsh white lights. The
intercom started buzzing again.

"Engine room, boss."

"What happened down there?" Tawney roared.

The man sounded like he'd just run the mile. "Generators," he panted.
"Blown out."

"Well, get somebody in there to fix them. Have a crew seal off the
area...."

"Can't, boss. Fix them, I mean."

"Why not? What have we got electricians for?"

"There's nothing left to fix. The generators aren't wrecked ... they're
demolished...."

"Then get the pair that did it...."

"They're not here. We've been sealed up tight. There's no way anybody
could have gotten in here...."

After that, things began to get confusing.

* * * * *

For a while Merrill Tawney thought that his crew was going crazy ... and
then he began to wonder if he were the one who was losing his mind.

Whatever the case, Merrill Tawney was certain of one thing. The things
that were happening on his orbit-ship could not possibly be happening.

A guard in one of the outer shell storage holds called in with a
disquieting report. Greg Hunter, it seemed, had just been spotted
vanishing into one of the storage compartments from the main outer-shell
corridor. When the guard had broken through the jammed hatchway to
collar his trapped victim, there was no sign of the victim anywhere
around.

At the same moment, a report came in from a guard on the opposite side
of the ship. He had just spotted Greg Hunter _there_, it seemed, moving
down a spur corridor. The guard had held his fire (according to Tawney's
orders) and summoned help to corner the quarry ... but when help
arrived, the quarry had vanished.

* * * * *

Five minutes later the Hunter boy was discovered in the Hydroponics
section, busily reducing all the yeast vats to shambles with a curious
weapon that seemed to eat holes in things. It ate the deck out from
under the guard's feet, sending him plunging through the floor into the
galley. By the time he had scrambled back again, the Hunter boy was
gone, and a rapid move to seal off the