responsibility. I'll keep my distress signal off until you get out of range."

"Uh-uh. It ain't as simple as that. I want your cargo. And I'm going to get it. Now let's be sensible. You know you don't have a chance."

"Maybe I've learned a few tricks."

The other snarled impatiently. "Okay, bright boy. I've had enough of this horseplay. I'm gonna let you see just the way things are.... Notice anything odd? Any peculiar noises aboard the Fleury?"

Brad cocked his head toward the stern. The complaining clanks and groans and off-beat thumpings maintained their steady rhythm. There were some new noises.

"I been listening to it get louder for the past three hours," Altman hinted.

Then Brad's ears picked it up—an erratic, excited clackety-clack-clackety-clack. He gasped.

Altman laughed. "That counter's setting up quite a sing-song, ain't it? I sorta think that pile might go boom in a few hours. But I'm hoping I can get your cargo aboard before then. You can come too if you want."

Brad swung swiftly and lurched for the passageway aft.

"Wish I was there to help you with the cad rod insertions," the laughing voice raced after him.

The dial on the forward side of the shielded bulkhead read Oh-Oh-point-Oh-Two-Four. He applied the figure to the adjacent graph and learned he could remain in the engine compartment for one minute and fourteen seconds, with a safety factor of ten per cent. In that period of time, he rationalized, he ought to be able to insert a sufficient number of cadmium control rods to bring the pile under control.

The counter clicked gratingly overhead as he undogged the hatch, swung it open and lunged into the steam-tormented acrid compartment.

He broke open the first locker and jerked the remaining three cad rods from their racks. Coughing and waving smoke from in front of his face, he swung open the door of the first reserve compartment.

It was empty!

The second reserve compartment was empty too, as were the two emergency compartments. Only three cadmium rods when he needed at least three dozen!

In a rapid dash around the pile block, he inserted the rods at spaced intervals in their slots. At least they would mean a few hours' grace. As he slid the last rod in he cursed himself and swore that if he ever commanded another ship he would not leave it unmanned at the dock—specifically if there was somebody like Altman berthed anywhere at the same spaceport.

The ruptured hypertube jacket, he wondered suddenly, not losing his count of seconds. It seemed unlikely now that it had let go as a result of defective material. He stepped to the flange that connected it with the stern bulkhead.

The tube, inactivated immediately after the blowout, was cold. He looked where his suspicions directed.... The aperture control valve had been readjusted! It had been displaced a full fifteen degrees on the topside of optimum power! A cunning setting—one that would trap and concentrate enough residual di-ions at normal power output to cut loose somewhere between the fifth and tenth jump.

He thought, too, of his transmitter that hadn't been powerful enough to reach farther than a couple of jumps since he had left spaceport. When, he asked himself, had Altman's radioman worked on it?

After he slammed the hatch and dogged it, he leaned against the thick metal for a long while. The clack-clack overhead was somewhat pacified. But it wouldn't remain that way long. He quelled the fear sensations that were racing through him and tried to think.

How long? How long had it been since Jim left? He was three jumps away a few hours ago—or was it longer than that?—and he still had seven to go or was it six? Had it been just a few hours ago, or was it days? He had slept some—twice, he believed—since then. But for how long? And if the tow ships did make it back in time, would they have spare rods?

He gave it up as a hopeless speculation and started back up the passageway, shoulders drooping.

Karoom!

The new sound reverberated through the agonized vessel and the bulkheads of the passageway shuddered in fanatic sympathy with it.

The deck shifted crazily beneath his feet and a port beam—the bulkhead and the rest of the ship following it—swung over to crash into his shoulder.

A stabbing pain shot up his arm as he slid down the tilting wall and landed in the right angle between the deck and the bulkhead.

Massaging the torn ligament in his arm, he sat up and swayed dizzily in resonance with the pendulum-like motion of the vessel. Then he struggled to his feet and stood upright—one foot planted at an angle against the deck and the other against the port bulkhead. Overhead was the corresponding juncture made by the ceiling plate and the starboard bulkhead.

Nausea welled as he tried to adjust to the new, perverted up and down references. He didn't have to wonder what had happened. The starboard gray coil that ran under the overheated converter, he knew, had finally shorted out. The port coil was still operating normally. He considered turning it off, but conceded it was better to struggle around in an apparently listing ship than to be wracked by the nausea of weightlessness.

Straddling the deck and port bulkhead, he waddled back to the hatchway, threw a leg over its edge and lifted himself into the control compartment, sliding down the floor to the port side. He worked his way to the control seat, readjusted its tilt and crawled in it.

Then he tore a strip out of his jacket and wrapped it around his shoulder as tightly as he could. The pressure eased the pain in his aching muscle.

The air gauge showed an almost normal Two-Nine-point-Three-Two pounds, sufficient oxygen content, and a satisfactory circulatory rate. He eagerly fished a cigarette from his jacket. He had earned it, he assured himself.

While he smoked he counted on the screen the amount of cargo that had spilled out when the loose crates had lurched with the vessel. Almost as fast as he counted it, the Cluster Queen swooped down on it and scooped it into her hatch.

Numbed, he found he could no longer react to the total disregard of his rights with any degree of excited resentment. He closed his eyes indifferently. Shuddering, he squeezed the cylinder of tobacco between his fingers without being aware of the action. The glowing end bent back and burned his knuckle.

Tossing the cigarette away, he realized suddenly his fight was futile. He couldn't possibly hold out until Jim returned, or in the hope that some other vessel would happen along. The pile, his arm, spillthrough, the Fleury threatening to break in two ... he enumerated all the factors.

If he went aboard the Cluster Queen now, Altman would at least give him passage to port. Any charges Brad would make would never hold up without substantiation. And Altman would see that he brought nothing with him that could back up the accusations. It would be just as easy for the crew of the Queen to prove that Brad Conally had conceived the whole weird account of assault and piracy as a means of winning back the cargo he was faced with losing.

He knew, however, that no matter what happened, he could kiss the Fleury goodbye. Altman would never allow it to reach port. There might be evidence aboard—perhaps evidence as simple as finger prints—to prove that Altman or one of his crew had tampered with the machinery.

Brad reached out to extend the gooseneck of the mike toward him.

But the stellar grid showing through the direct-view port was blotted out suddenly. He jerked his gaze to the scope. The Queen was overhead—almost within grappling distance!

He started to shout out, but at the same time brilliant hell exploded outside.

The Cluster Queen's jetwash raked across the upper bow of the Fleury, throwing its nose down and its tail up and over in a hateful, wrenching spin.

The spin continued, losing