ed the end to the portion which came into the cabin,
making a bowline knot of the loop. Deveet picked up the missile from the
floor, where Jonner had thrown it.

"Looks like a spent rocket shell," he commented.

"It's a signal rocket," said Jonner. "The flare trigger was
disconnected."

He picked up the microphone and called the _Radiant Hope_ on Phobos.

"We've hooked our fish, Qoqol," he told the Martian, and laid the mike
aside.

"What does that mean?" asked Deveet.

"Means we'd better strap in," said Jonner, suiting the action to the
words. "You're in for a short trip to Phobos, Deveet."

Jonner pulled back slowly on the elevator control, and the plane began a
shallow climb. At 700 miles an hour, it began to attain a height at
which its broad wings--broader than those of any terrestrial
plane--would not support it.

"I'm trying to decide," said Deveet with forced calm, "whether you've
flipped your helmet."

"Nope," answered Jonner. "Trolling for those fish in Mars City gave me
the idea. The rest was no more than an astrogation problem, like any
rendezvous with a ship in a fixed orbit, which Qoqol could figure.
Remember that 6,000-mile television cable the ship's hauling? Qoqol just
shot the end of it down to Mars' surface by signal rocket, we hooked on
and now he'll haul us up to Phobos. He's got the ship's engine hooked
onto the cable winch."

The jets coughed and stopped. The plane was out of fuel. It was on
momentum--to be drawn by the cable, or to snap it and fall.

"Impossible!" cried Deveet in alarm. "Phobos' orbital speed is more than
a mile a second! No cable can take the sudden difference in that and the
speed we're traveling. When the slack is gone, it'll break!"

"The slack's gone already. You're thinking of the speed of Phobos, _at
Phobos_. At this end of the cable, we're like the head of a man in the
control section of a space station, which is traveling slower than his
feet because its orbit is smaller--but it revolves around the center in
the same time.

"Look," Jonner added, "I'll put it in round numbers. Figure your cable
as part of a radius of Phobos' orbit. Phobos travels at 1.32, but the
other end of the radius travels at zero because it's at the center. The
cable end, at the Martian surface, travels at a speed in
between--roughly 1,200 miles an hour--but it keeps up with Phobos'
revolution. Since the surface of Mars itself rotates at 500 miles an
hour, all I had to do was boost