well boiled over. But did it gain me anything? Before I had said half enough to soothe my lacerated feelings, the girl simply shrugged and looked bored.

"Don't be a fool," she ordered curtly. "We needed you, and I, for one, was not going to see your egotistical ideas about an unimportant piece of work—your cosmological chemistry—jeopardize the safety of the world. Oh, I know the government wanted you in your laboratory. But with Ludwig Leider loose on Orcon, and you the only one in our Zone who knew much of anything about the planet, what could you expect?"

I hardly know what might have happened between us if she had not mentioned Leider's name when she did. The insults with which she had begun had hardly been atoned for by her half understanding of my refusal to join Forbes, and I was still in a rage. Yet, as it was, at the mention of Leider I snapped to attention.

"Ludwig Leider! Here?"

[58] "Yes," she replied significantly.

"But that makes a difference! Why wasn't I told? Why this silly kidnapping?"

She moved a little on the couch and looked at me.

"There was not time to tell you and to chance putting up with further silly arguments on your part. When the secret service detail which had been handling the Leider case brought in word of his whereabouts, there was time only to get a ship specially outfitted for such a tremendous journey and start. We had to kidnap you."

I hardly heard her last words. Ludwig Leider—scientist extraordinary, renegade, terrorist. Everyone of our latter day century knew that he was the greatest example of the megalomaniac—the power-seeking genius—which the human race had produced for decades. Everyone knew that he—furious because he had been denied the high position he craved as ruler for life of the united peoples of Earth—had been the leader of the interplanetary struggle which had resulted in Forbes' brilliantly successful attack on Calypsus. And everyone knew that he had escaped from Calypsus. And that, while he was free, there could be no real safety anywhere, either for Earth, which he hated, or any of its allied planets. Leider, here! No wonder I had been observing queer goings on in Orcon!

Somehow I forgot to be angry with poor dead Forbes. Almost I forgot to disapprove of the woman.

"See here!" I broke out. "If your secret service detail was right, and Leider is on Orcon, we've got to stop talking and get going. Tell me more about your expedition."

"Do you know," she said presently, "I rather thought you would make quite a leader—and fighter—if you could ever be aroused. As for the expedition, we have only this one ship. It's that kind of a job."

"Oh, suicide party, eh?"

I ignored her remark about my ability as a fighter. I had never aspired to any sort of naval or military leadership.

"Yes," she answered; "suicide party. And I suppose, with our ship wrecked, our admiral dead, and contact with Leider not even made as yet, it's become doubly so. But we've got to do something."

She leaned forward on the couch.

"Our primary objective," she went on, "was to reach Orcon and scout, and then radio information back to Earth. But we also have two tons of the new explosive, kotomite, aboard and are to do damage if we can. What are you going to do, Doctor? The command is yours now."

I was well enough versed in the upper space tactics of our modern navy to appreciate the wisdom which had been used in sending the one ship alone on the expedition, and I could well understand the reasonable hope of success which had been promised. I confess I was staggered to know what could be done, however, now that the admiral was dead and the ship wrecked. As for my having inherited the command, I was even more disconcerted.

"I don't know what we're going to do," I said in answer to Captain Crane's question. "I doubt if Forbes would know, if he were alive, and I'm by no means the commander he was. But, as you say, we have to do something. So, since it's a little early in the game to explode the kotomite and call it a day's work, we better declare a truce between ourselves, and then check up on the ship. Come on, if you're able."

She was able.

[59] In the next twenty minutes we found that it was the forward end of the great flier which was damaged, and that while she was in fair shape amidships and astern, she would never fly again. We discovered that the three unaccounted-for men of the crew were lying forward, and found that two were dead and one lived—a radio man named LeConte. He had two ribs broken. Half a dozen atomic guns remained to us, and we found intact one dynamo capable of generating the new cold light in considerable quantities. It was not an encouraging check-up, though. Out of a crew of ten, only the four of us were alive; Captain Crane, the Jap, LeConte, and myself. And all of us were more or less battered. The ship was still habitable, but smashed beyond hope of repair. Around us stretched Orcon—in the control of Ludwig Leider.

I got LeConte, the radio man with the broken ribs, into the small cabin where the Jap still lay and made him comfortable. Then I set the Jap's broken arm. I gave both him and LeConte an injection of penopalatrin in order that their shattered bones might be decently knitted in two or three hours. The Jap presently came to, and I found that he was a civilian like myself, but one who had long been employed on the U. S. W. research staff as a ray and explosive expert. I realized at once that he was the inventor of the kotomite with which the ship was loaded.

All of them, including Captain Crane, told me the story of the crash. Captain Crane hadn't been responsible, after all. Their magnogravitos system had failed in some mysterious manner as they approached Orcon. In spite of the checking effect of their helium pontoons, which had expanded properly when they had come into Orcon's atmosphere, they had slammed into a sea of light and crashed. That was all anyone knew. But everyone suspected that Leider had been somehow responsible.

"I do not enjoy the prospect," Koto said after a glance at his temporarily helpless left arm. "If Leider is able to wreck a space ship before she ever reaches his planet, he has more power than he ever had during the Calypsus war."

I said nothing, but simply looked at LeConte, and nodded approval when he muttered something about getting his sending set in shape, if that were possible. We were sitting in the small cabin and Captain Crane was searching my face with those discomforting, violet-lighted gray eyes. I knew she was asking me once more what I was going to do, and I knew that, except that we might fire the kotomite, I could tell her nothing.

We sat on in silence. Then, however, before I spoke about the kotomite, a change came.

All at once I felt the space flier tremble under me. It rocked gently over on one side and began to move. Slowly, but definitely.

Koto and I were on our feet in a flash. Captain Crane stiffened and faced me, waiting.

"What is it?" Koto gasped.

"We'll find out what it is," I flung back. "Miss Crane—Captain—on deck with you. Here, Koto, a hand with one of the guns. We'll take it up out of the hatchway and through the main cabin."

LeConte, I knew, was the one we must be careful of, with his cracked ribs.

"Get to your apparatus," I ordered him, "and stay with it until you get through to Earth."

With that I jumped into the main cabin, stepped over Forbes' lifeless body, and caught hold of the nearest of the atomic guns. I was to be a leader, after all.

CHAPTER II
The Cable of Menace

[60] It was dark when we gained the deck; as dark as it had been when I