less he became. His arms and legs
splayed out in an effort to level himself, as he kept trying to fire the
ray gun.

Tom saw his chance and lunged through the air again, straight at the
floating spaceman. He passed him in mid-air. Mason made an attempt to
grab him, but Tom wrenched his body to one side and pulled the ray gun
out of the other's hand.

He flipped over and turned his attention to Loring who was more
dangerous, since he was now backed up against a bulkhead waiting for Tom
to present a steady target. Loring started to fire, but Tom saw him in
time and shot away from the wall toward the hatch. He twisted his body
completely around, and with his shoulder hunched over, fired at Loring
with his ray gun. The charge hit the target and Loring became rigid, his
body slowly floating above the deck. His back to the wall, braced for
the recoil, Tom brought his arm around slowly and aimed at Mason. He
fired, and the spaceman stiffened.

Tom smiled. Neither of the spacemen would give him any more trouble now.
He pushed slightly to the left and shot over to the valve that Mason had
unwittingly turned off. Tom turned it on and clung to an overhead pipe
until he felt the reassuring grip of the synthetic gravity pull him to
the deck. Loring and Mason, in the same positions they had been in when
Tom fired, settled slowly to the deck. Tom walked over and looked at
both of them. He knew they could hear him.

"For smart spacemen like you two," said Tom, "you sure forgot your basic
physics. Newton's laws of motion, remember? Everything in motion tends
to keep going at the same speed, unless influenced by an outside force.
Firing the ray gun was the outside force that will land you right on a
prison asteroid! And you'd better start praying that I can pull those
fellows off that satellite, because if I don't, you'll wind up frying in
the sun with us!"

He started to drag them to a locker and release them from the effects of
the ray blast, but, remembering their cold-blooded condemnation of
Connel and the others to death on the satellite, he decided to let them
remain where they were.

He turned to the control board and flipped on the microphone. He was too
far away to pick up an image on the teleceiver, but the others could
hear him on the audio, if, thought Tom, they were still alive.

"Attention! Attention! _Polaris_ to Major Connel! Major Connel, can you
hear me? Come in, Major Connel--Astro--Roger--somebody--come in!"