med that every man in the room had been holding his breath in
the chill darkness. The lights came on again; the Erentz motors
accelerated to normal. The strain on the walls eased up, and the room
began warming.

Had the Earth caught our signal? We did not want to waste the power to
find out. Our receivers were disconnected. If an answering signal
came, we could not know it. One of the men said:

"Let's assume they read us." He laughed, but it was a high-pitched,
tense laugh. "We don't dare even use the telescope or television. Or
electron radio. Our rescue ship might be right overhead, visible to
the naked eye, before we see it. Three days more--that's what I'll
give it."

But the three days passed and no rescue ship came. The Earth was
almost at the full. We tried signaling again. Perhaps it got
through--we did not know. But our power was weaker now. The wall of
one of the rooms sprang a leak, and the men were hours repairing it. I
did not say so, but never once did I feel that our signals were read
on Earth. Those cursed clouds! The Earth almost everywhere seemed to
have poor visibility.

Four of our eight days of grace were all too soon passed. The brigand
ship must be half way here by now.

They were busy days for us. If we could have captured Miko and his
band, our danger would have been less imminent. With the treasure
insulated, and our camp in darkness, the arriving brigand ship might
never find us. But Miko knew our location; he would signal his
oncoming ship when it was close and lead it to us.

During those three days--and the days which followed them--Grantline
sent out searching parties. But it was unavailing. Miko, Moa and
Coniston, with their five underlings, could not be found.

We had at first hoped that the brigands might have perished. But that
was soon dispelled! I went--about the third day--with the party that
was sent to the _Planetara_. We wanted to salvage some of its
equipment, its unbroken power units. And Snap and I had worked out an
idea which we thought might be of service. We needed some of the
_Planetara's_ smaller gravity plate sections. Those in Grantline's
wrecked little _Comet_ had stood so long that their radiations had
gone dead. But the _Planetara's_ were still working.

Our hope that Miko might have perished was dashed. He too had returned
to the _Planetara_! The evidence was clear before us. The vessel was
stripped of all its power units save those which were dead and
u