one, Haljan?"

I hesitated. "Yes."

"I was thinking...." He leaned closer toward me. "If, in half an hour,
you could use it upon Miko's cabin--I would rather tell you than the
captain or anyone else. The cabin will be insulated, but I shall find a
way of cutting off that insulation so that you may hear."

So George Prince had turned with us! The shock of his sister's
death--himself allied to her murderer!--had been too much for him. He
was with us!

Yet his help must be given secretly. Miko would kill him in an instant
if it became known.

He had been watchful of the deck. He stood up now.

"I think that is all."

As he turned away, I murmured, "But I do thank you...."

* * * * *

The name Set Miko glowed upon the small metal door. It was in a
transverse corridor similar to A 22. The corridor was forward of the
lounge: it opened off the small circular library.

The library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected
lights from the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder-case. The
door of Miko's room was in sight, being some thirty feet away from me.

I waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered. Then I realized
that doubtless the conspirators were already there. I set my tiny
eavesdropper on the library floor beside me; connected its little
battery; focused its projector. Was Miko's room insulated? I could not
tell. There was a small ventilating grid above the door. Across its
opening, if the room were insulated, a blue sheen of radiance
would be showing. And there would be a faint hum. But from this
distance I could not see or hear such details, and I was afraid to
approach closer. Once in the transverse corridor, I would have no
place to hide, no way of escape; if anyone approached Miko's door, I
would be discovered.

I threw the current into my little apparatus. I prayed, if it met
interference, that the slight sound would pass unnoticed. George Prince
had said he would make opportunity to disconnect the room's insulation.
He had evidently done so. I picked up the interior sounds at once; my
headphone vibrated with them. And with trembling fingers on the little
dial between my knees as I crouched in the darkness behind the
cylinder-case, I synchronized.

"Johnson is a fool." It was Miko's voice. "We must have the pass-words."

"He got them from the helio-room." A man's voice; I puzzled over it at
first, then recognized it. Rance Rankin.