e's one less thread in the female plug. The male plug is
stopped before it can make contact. There's a gap of about a tenth of
an inch when the coupling is screwed up tight."

"Let me see," Smith said. He took the toothpick and went through the
same operation. "You're right," he said ruefully, "the female plug is
faulty. We'll have to use one of the other screamers."

"Right," said Jayjay.

Wrong, said Fate. Or the Powers That Be, or the Fallibility of Man,
whatever you want to call it.

Every screamer unit suffered from the same defect.

* * * * *

"I don't understand it!" A pause. "It's impossible! Those units were
tested!"

For the first time in his life, Captain Atef Abdullah Al-Amin allowed
his voice to betray him.

Arabic is normally spoken about half an octave above the normal tone
used for English. And, unlike American English, it tends to waver up
and down the scale. Usually, the captain spoke English in the flat,
un-accented tones of the Midwest American accent, and spoke Arabic in
the ululating tones of the Egyptian.

But now he was speaking English with an Egyptian waver, not realizing
that he was doing it.

"How could it happen? It's ridiculous!"

The captain, his maintenance officer, and Jeffry Hull were clustered
around the screamer unit in the lounge. Off to one side, Jayjay Kelvin
held a deck of cards in his hands and played a game of patience called
"transportation solitaire." His eyes didn't miss a play, just as his
ears didn't miss a word.

He pulled an ace from the back of the deck and flipped it to the
front.

"You said the screamers had been checked," Jeffry Hull said
accusingly. "How come they _weren't_ checked?"

"They _were_!" Al-Amin said sharply.

"Sure they were," Smith added. "I watched the check-off. There was
nothing wrong then."

"Meanwhile," Hull said, the acid bite of fear in his voice, "we have
to sit here and wait for the Interplanetary Police to find us by pure
luck."

The captain should have let Hull cling to the idea that the IP could
find the _Persephone_, even if no signal was sent. But the captain was
almost as angry and flustered as Hull was.

[Illustration]

"Find us?" he snapped. "Don't be ridiculous! We won't even be missed
until we're due at Styx, on Pluto, nine days from now. By that time,
we'll be close to two billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto. We'll
never be found if we wait 'til then. Something has to be d