hours, heater pack fully charged,
soda-ash only half saturated ... it would do. Above him he could see the
rear jets of the Ranger. He swung out onto the orbit-ship's hull, and
began crawling up toward the enemy ship.

It was slow going. Every pressure suit had magnetic boots and hand-pads
to enable crewmen to go outside and make repairs on the hull of a ship
in transit. Tom clung, and moved, and clung again, trying to reach the
protecting hull of the Ranger before the orbit-ship swung him around to
the sun-side again....

He couldn't move fast enough. He saw the line of sunlight coming around
the ship as it swung full into the sun. He froze, crouching motionless.
If somebody on the Ranger spotted him now, it was all over. He was
exposed like a lizard on a rock. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, as
the ship spun ponderously around, carrying him into shadow again.

And nothing happened. He started crawling upward again, reached up to
grab the mooring cable, and swung himself across to the hull of the
Ranger. The airlock hung open; he scuttled behind it, clinging to the
hull in its shadow just as Greg and Johnny were herded across by the
Jupiter Equilateral guards.

Then he waited. There was no sound, no sign of life. After a while the
Ranger's inner lock opened, and a group of men hurried across to the
orbit-ship. Probably a searching party, Tom thought. Soon the men came
back, then returned to the orbit-ship. After another minute, he felt the
vibration of the _Scavenger_'s motors, and he knew that his snare had
been triggered.

He saw the little ship break free and streak out in its curving
trajectory. He saw the homing shells burst from the Ranger's tubes. The
_Scavenger_ vanished from his range of vision, but moments later he saw
the sudden flare of light reflected against the hull of the orbit-ship,
and he knew his plan had worked, but the ordeal lay ahead.

And at the end of it, he might really be a dead man.

* * * * *

Hours later, the last group of looters left the orbit-ship, and the
airlock to the Ranger clanged shut. Tom heard the sucking sound of the
air-tight seals, then silence. The orbit-ship was empty, its insides
gutted, its engines no longer operable. The Ranger hung like a long
splinter of silver alongside her hull, poised and ready to move on.

He knew that the time had come. Very soon the blastoff and the
accelleration would begin. He had a few moments to f