The men of the Peccable were awake in an instant — those eight who had been sleeping, at any rate. A two-man skeleton team had been guarding the ship. Harskin had been meditating in Control Cabin, and Archer and Lloyd had not yet returned from their scouting missions.

Almost simultaneously with the explosion came the clangor of the alarm bell at the main airlock, signifying someone wanted in. A moment later, Observer First Class Snollgren was on the wire, excitedly jabbering something incoherent.

Harskin switched on the all-ship communicator and yelled, “Stop! Whoa! Halt!”

There was silence. He said, “Clyde, see what’s going on at the airlock. Snollgren, slow down and tell me what you just saw.”

“It was the Rigelian ship, sir!” the observer said. “It just left. That was the noise we heard.”

“You sure of that?”

“Double positive. It took off in one hell of a hurry and I caught it on a tangent bound out of here.”

“Okay. Clyde, what’s at the airlock?”

“It’s Lloyd, sir. He’s back, and he’s got a Rigelian prisoner with him.”

“Prisoner? What the — all right, have them both come up here.”

Radioman Klaristenfeld was next on the line. He said, “Sir, report coming in from the base on Fasolt. They confirm blast-off of a ship from Fafnir. They thought it might be us.”

“Tell the idiots it isn’t,” Harskin snapped. “And tell them to watch out for the Rigelian ship. It’s probably on its way back to Fasolt.”

The door-annunciator chimed. Harskin pressed admit and Lloyd entered, preceded at blaster-point by a very angry-looking Rigelian.

“Where’d you find him?” Harskin asked.

“Mousing around near the ship,” Lloyd said. The thin spaceman was pale and tense-looking. “I was patrolling the area as you suggested when I heard the explosion. I looked up and saw the Rigelian ship overhead and heading outward. And then this guy came crashing out of the underbrush and started cursing a blue streak in Rigelian. He didn’t even see me until I had the blaster pointing in his face.”