the billions. We want to help them, but we simply must hold the line on this quarantine until we solve the medical problem."

They stared at him in silence, and Phillips noticed that the old man's forehead was moist with tiny beads of perspiration.

"Don't you see? They are as good as dead. No knowledge or help of man can save them—as of this moment. If we are ever to be of any help, we must prevent a worse catastrophe.

"Yes, the survival ship is a world in itself, but this world must die!"

For a minute or two, it seemed to Phillips that he could hear each person in the control room breathing. Finally, there was a small sound of cloth rubbing on metal as Brecken stirred. "Why pick on us?" he rasped from his seat on the deck. "I'm no volunteer!"

"I know what you are," replied Varret sharply. "I know what you all are. You have been chosen for this mission of murder, because you are the only people in our culture who are capable of this kind of violence. You have broken our laws, and this is your punishment.

"It would take us too long to find others like you who had merely never faced the same circumstances that sent you four to Luna. We have made attempts to attack this vessel. Manned by normal men, our ships could accomplish nothing."

"Why not?" asked Phillips.

"The crews found they could not kill!"

"What?"

"It amounts to that. One pilot blacked out at the start of an offensive approach. He lost contact before recovering—you realize how quickly that happens at interplanetary speeds. On several other ships, there were passive mutinies. One was destroyed; how, we do not know."

"Why don't you get some men in your Department of Security?" sneered Brecken.

Varret sighed. "It was far from simple cowardice. The crews had fine records. We have been civilized too long, so long that the idea of deliberate killing unnerved them. As to the one ship that did make some motion to attack, it may have been destroyed by the cruiser's defenses, or even by sabotage. Somebody may quite possibly have found the mission too repulsive to face with complete sanity."

He was interrupted by a uniformed man, who slid the door open and gestured significantly. Varret paused. He nodded, and the newcomer retired.

"I have only a few minutes," said the old man, facing them again. "To be brief, this patrol vessel is armed with the best we have in guided atomic missiles and sensitive detection devices. Technical manuals are supplied for everything we could think of, though I doubt you will need them. We have brought you to within a few hundred miles of them.

"In a few minutes, my men and I will transfer to an escort ship. We will slip in behind Deimos, not too far away, and pick you up afterward to land you on Mars. Any questions?"

"Yes," said Phillips.

"What?"

"Why should we do anything at all?"

Varret's lips tightened. A guard shrugged contemptuously. "I was told to expect that attitude," the old man admitted. "I suppose it is part of the character we now think is needed for such an expedition."

"You could hardly expect co-operation," Phillips pointed out. "Laws against any kind of homicide are all well enough, but I for one don't see why I should draw the same sentence as a murderer. I had to protect myself or die—probably through having that crazy fool blow up my rocket room."

"You'll make a cold landing on Sol before you'll get any help from me!" Brecken added defiantly.

The girl said nothing, but Truesdale muttered darkly.

"Please!" said Varret. "I have no time to argue about our social and legal codes. The Council foresaw that the threat of being yourselves subject to this plague might not be enough. If you succeed in destroying or even immobilizing the cruiser, I can offer you anything you want short of unsupervised liberty. You must still be watched as potential dangers to society, but you may otherwise be as wealthy or independent as you wish."

He motioned to the guards, who had begun to fidget impatiently; wordlessly they left the compartment.

"You can settle your relations among yourselves," said Varret. "We chose Bailey partly because she has piloted rockets privately, and Phillips because he was a space engineer. Perhaps Brecken could handle the torpedoes—I do not know." He rubbed his chin uneasily. "Frankly, I find intimate discussion of the affair repulsive. I hope you will decide to do what is necessary for the welfare of Earth."

He turned abruptly and left the control room. They heard distant voices exhorting him to hurry.

Brecken arose and crept furtively to the door. He leaned out to peer down the corridor. The nervous Truesdale bounced up to crowd behind him. Phillips and the girl looked at each other; she shrugged, and they too got to their feet. She turned to the instrument panels; and after a moment, Phillips joined her.

"How have they got it?" he asked. "Controls locked?"

"No," murmured Donna. "Don't need to; we're just coasting. Nice job, though. Fast as a racer, I imagine."

"You know something about racers?"

"I used to think I did," she answered, shortly.

He saw pain darken her blue eyes and decided to probe no further. Instead, he wandered about, inspecting the instruments. A few minutes later, with a spaceman's indefinable alertness, he felt a change in the ship.

"They still aboard?" he called to Truesdale, who remained at the door although Brecken had disappeared.

The youth glanced over his shoulder but did not trouble to reply. Phillips' jaw set, and he took a quick step toward the other. Before he reached the doorway, however, Brecken returned from the corridor. Shouldering Truesdale aside, he strode into the control room. "Well," he announced, "the old fool hopped off like he said. Got a viewer in here?"

"I have it on now," called Donna from the instrument desk. "There he goes."

They gathered around the screen to watch. Near one edge was the image of another ship, with several spacesuited figures clustered around its entrance port. The girl made an adjustment, and the view crept over to the center of the screen just as the last of the figures vanished into the opening. Almost immediately, the other rocket slanted away on a new course.

Donna followed it on the screen until the brief flashes of its jets were dimmed by a new radiance—the ruddy disk of Mars. "We are where he said," she admitted. "Now what?"

She looked at Phillips, who merely shrugged. "What do you make of it?" she insisted.

"Pretty much as he said, probably," answered the engineer. "He's heading for Deimos, I suppose. I hear they're landscaping the whole moon—it's only about five miles in diameter—and building a new space station for a radio beacon and relay."

"Does that log say anything about the plague ship?" asked Truesdale nervously.

Donna scanned the observation record, then adjusted the viewer. The red radiance of Mars fled, to be replaced by a dimmer scene of distant stars.

"In there someplace," she said. "Out of range of this screen, but we could probably locate it with detector instruments."

"Why all the jabber?" demanded Brecken. "Let's get going!"

Phillips stared at him. "What's the rush? Did he sell you that easily?"

"Huh? Oh, hell, no! I mean let's make a dive for Mars. They were dumb to set us loose with a fast ship. We're dumber if we don't use it!"

"That's right," agreed Truesdale eagerly. "We don't owe them anything. They owe us; for the years they took out of our lives!"

Truesdale had a point there, Phillips felt. This could grow into quite a discussion, and