centered on one screen, so he concentrated on steering the other missile. He made the nose yaw, but was unable to locate anything on its screen.

"You're sending one of them too far above, I think," Donna reported.

"I have something wrong," he shouted. "I can't spot them at all for that one. The jets must be out of line and shooting it in a curve."

Nevertheless, he fired a corrective blast on the weight of the guess, before returning his attention to the first torpedo.

This one was right on the curve. He could see the massive hull of the cruiser plainly now. It was almost featureless until, as he watched, several sections seemed to slide aside.

The screen showed him a momentary glimpse of a swarm of small, flame-tailed objects spewing forth from one of the openings. Then the view went dark. "Interceptor rockets with proximity fuses," he muttered. "They'll be after us next, crazy-mean and frantic!"

Over the intercom, he heard Donna exclaim in dismay. He caught a fleeting sight of her face and realized that the situation must be torture for the girl, as for himself or any normal person of their civilization.

Cursing himself for an optimist, he raised two more of the missiles from the magazine. Hopping about like a jet-checker five minutes before take-off time, he made them ready. It seemed like hours before he got them into the launching tubes and blew them out into the void.

Again, he watched the other vessel appear ahead of his torpedoes, this time on both screens. Before the gap narrowed, he had a better opportunity to see the defenses of the cruiser in action.

A whitish cloud of gas was expelled from his target's hull, bearing a myriad of small objects which promptly acquired a life of their own. Both screens were filled with flashing, diverging trails of flame. Then—nothing.

"They're heading at us!" called Donna. "Hang on!"

Phillips had already pulled the switches to bring up a new pair of torpedoes. Hearing the urgency in Donna's tone, he leaped toward a rack of spacesuits and grabbed.

The next instant, he was pinned forcibly against the rack by acceleration, as Donna made the ship dodge aside. From one side, he heard a screech of grating metal. The fresh missiles must have jammed halfway out of the storage compartment.

It gave him a weird feeling of unreality; as he hung there helplessly, to see one of the screens on the bulkhead pick up something moving, gleaming, metallic.

"Donna!" he shouted hoarsely. "Let up!"

"I don't dare," she gasped over the intercom. "I lost them, but they were starting after us!"

"Let up!" repeated Phillips. "They're dead ahead of that wild shot of ours. Let me get to the controls!"

He dropped abruptly to the deck as the acceleration vanished. One leap carried him to the radio controls.

The metallic gleam had swelled into a huge spaceship. The cruiser was angling slightly away from the point from which he seemed to be viewing it. How soon, he wondered, would they detect the presence of his torpedo? Or would they neglect this direction, being intent upon the destruction of those who were attempting to frustrate their mad dash for Mars?

Phillips stood before the screen, clenching his fists. There was, after all, nothing for him to do but watch. The gleaming hull expanded with a swelling rush. Details of construction, hitherto invisible, leaped out at him. A crack finally appeared as a section began to slide back.

This time, however, there was no blinding flare of small rockets. The blacking out of the screen coincided with Donna's scream. "It hit!"

In the silence that followed, he thought he heard a sob.

"Oh, Phillips," she said, recovering, "we did it. They're—"

"Hang on," said Phillips. "I'll climb into a spacesuit and come forward."

He switched off the intercom and dragged a suit from the rack. It took him a good fifteen minutes to get the helmet screwed on properly and to check everything else. He realized that he was very tired.

He opened the exit hatch, seized the top of the ladder in his gauntlets as the air exploded out of the turret, and climbed back to the main deck.

Clumping forward through the airless corridor, he stopped to look into the compartment where he had left Brecken. He quickly slid the door shut again.

He found that Donna had sealed off the corridor just short of the control room by closing a double emergency door that must have been designed to form an airlock in just such a situation. He hammered upon it, and she slid it open from the control desk.

It closed again behind him, and he entered the control room through the usual door. The girl helped him to remove the suit and motioned him toward the screen.

Phillips regarded the scene without enthusiasm. The sight of the dead man had reminded him of what the compartments of that other vessel must look like by now. Its parts were beginning to scatter slowly.

He looked at Donna, and found her regarding him soberly. "What will they do with us now?" she asked.

She looked exhausted. He extended an arm, and she leaned against him. "You heard what Varret said," he told her.

"Yes, but will he keep his word? They might be ... ashamed of us, now that it's done. Even if they're not, I can't bear the thought of going back to Earth and having them stare at me!"

Phillips nodded. He remembered the morbid curiosity during his own trial, the crowds who had watched him with a kind of shrinking horror—and he had actually been responsible for saving a spaceship and its crew, had they cared to look on that side of the affair.

But he had killed. That was no longer the action of a normal human being, according to popular thinking.

"I guess you and I are the only ones who will understand one another from now on," he shrugged.

Donna smiled faintly, just as the signal sounded on the communication screen.

It was Varret, looking pale and strained. He listened to Phillips' account, including the deaths of Truesdale and Brecken, and apologized for his appearance. He had, he informed them, been unpleasantly ill when he had seen the explosion. "It was a terrible thing," Varret continued sadly, "but necessary. They were beyond reasoning with, and a deadly menace."

He pulled himself together and tried to hide his agitation by reminding them of his promise. He suggested that they consider their requests while his ship attempted to tow them in to Deimos.

Phillips glanced speculatively at Donna. They would be two outcasts, however much their deed might be respected abstractly, however much official expressions of gratitude were employed to gloss over the fact. He might as well take one chance more. "We have already decided," he said boldly. "I hear you are building a new space station on Deimos."

The old man nodded, surprised.

"We will ask for a deed to that moon, and a contract to operate the beacon and radio relay station," Phillips stated flatly.

Varret blinked, then smiled slightly in a sort of understanding admiration.

"Reasonable and astute," he murmured after a moment's hesitation. "I think I appreciate the motive. Perhaps, if that ship can be repaired and remodeled, we can include it so that you may make short visits to Mars."

He warned them to watch for the emergency crew he would send to their aid, and switched off.

Phillips then dared finally to turn and look inquiringly at Donna. Her smile was relaxed for the first time since they had met. "Nice bargaining," she said, and Phillips felt like the king of something larger than a tiny Martian satellite.