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There was a pause and then the voice answered, "South southwest. Speed, emergency
maximum."
"Very well. I will adjust course to meet you. But what's the hurry?" asked Tom's captor.
"Better get out of space as soon as possible."
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
Tom listened intently. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize the charts and space
quadrants he had heard mentioned. He knew the quadrants by heart, and knew that he was
close to the asteroid belt. But each quadrant had at least a dozen or more charts, each one
taking in a huge area of space.
"Is Brett with you?" asked the voice over the audioceiver.
"No. I'll tell you about it when we get together. All the rockets in space broke loose up
there on Titan for a while."
"What do you mean? Hey! I think I just picked you up on my radar!" said the voice over
the loud-speaker. "Give me the identification signal."
Tom watched Miles go to the radarscope and make a minute adjustment. The voice
came over the loudspeaker again. "That's you, all right. Cut back to minimum speed and I'll
maneuver to your space lock."
Space Knight.
"Very well," replied the spaceman on the
He cut the rockets and in a matter of minutes the ship was bumped heavily as contact
was made. The voice over the communicator announced the two space vessels had been
coupled. "Open your air lock and come aboard."
"You come aboard my ship," said Miles. "We've got the stuff here."
"O.K. But I have to go below and wake up that jerk, Manning."
"Wake him up?"
"Yeah. I got him frozen."
"All right, make it snappy."
Miles turned to look at Tom, a sneer on his face. "I'm giving you a break, Corbett," he
said. "You're going to swim with your cadet buddy. You'll have company!"
Gagged, Tom could only glare his hatred at the black-suited spaceman. In a moment he
heard the air lock open below and then footsteps clattered up the ladder to the control deck.
The hatch opened and Roger stumbled inside. He saw Tom immediately and yelled,
"Tom! What are-" Suddenly he stopped. He looked at the man standing beside Tom and
gasped in astonishment.
Tom watched the hatch as Roger's captor stepped inside. What he saw made him twist
around in his chair and stare at the man beside him, utterly bewildered.
"Twins!"
cried Roger. "Identical twins."
The man stepped through the hatch and walked over to his brother. They shook hands
and slapped each other on the back.
"What happened to Charley, Ross?" asked Quent Miles.
"Just a minute, Quent," replied his brother. He turned and grinned at Tom and Roger.
"Surprised, huh? Don't let it bother you. We've been driving people crazy ever since we
were born. Does this tell you how we won the race?"
"T-t-twin pilots," stuttered Tom in amazement. "And twin ships?"
"Exactly." Ross laughed. "Pretty smart, eh?"
"Never mind them now," snarled Quent. "I've been sitting up there on that asteroid rock
talking to myself. What happened to Charley?"
"Take it easy, will you, Quent?" said Ross. "I want to have some fun." He turned to
Manning. "Untie Corbett and get on the other side of the deck. Have yourselves a nice long
talk before you take your last walk."
Roger slowly bent over to untie Tom, muttering a space oath under his breath. The two
brothers retired to the opposite side of the control deck and sat down. Ross kept his
paralo-ray pistol in his hand and never once took his eyes off the two cadets.
"Well, what happened?" demanded Quent. "What are you doing here with Corbett and
where in the blazes is Charley?"
"Charley is back on Titan, and probably dead," replied Ross easily. "He wouldn't pay
any attention to us when we suggested plugging up the old tunnels when we started mining
that uranium, so the oxygen which we were sucking off from the main screen supply took too
much. The screens started to go. Practically the whole city is flooded with ammonia gas and
it's being abandoned."
Roger and Tom stood quietly, listening, and when Roger heard the news he turned to
Tom with a questioning look on his face. Tom merely nodded grimly.
"But what are you doing here with this load of pitchblende?" Quent persisted.
"Everything would have been all right, even with the screens letting go," explained Ross,
"if it hadn't been for Corbett and that big jerk Astro. They followed me out to the warehouse
and down into the mine. Good thing we caught them, or we'd be on our way to a prison
asteroid right now."
Quent glared over at Tom. "And Charley spilled the beans about the whole thing, eh?"
"Not exactly, but the Solar Guard knows enough to be suspicious," replied Ross. "We
had some trouble with the radiation-detection gear and wanted to haul it out to the hide-out
for Manning to check. We decided to bring out as much of the stuff as we had mined, and
when we caught Corbett and Astro snooping around, we made them load the ship. Corbett,
here, got smart and Astro escaped. In the fight, Charley fell out of the ship. I don't know if he
got away or not."
"Do we have a whole shipload of the stuff?" asked Quent.
Ross grinned. "About two million credits' worth."
Quent rubbed his hands together. "We're in clover." He laughed and slapped his brother
on the back. "Well, I suppose the Solar Guard is looking for us by now?"
Ross grinned. "Right. So we pull the old trick, eh? We have two very likely prospects
right there." He pointed to Roger and Tom.
"What is that supposed to mean?" snapped Roger.
"You'll find out, squirt," sneered Quent Miles.
"Wait a minute, Quent," said Ross. "I just thought of something. No one knows there are
two of us, except these two punks here. We can't work the old gag. We can only use one of
them."
"How do you mean?"
"Simple. The Solar Guard thinks Manning took it on the lam from Ganymede, right?"
Quent nodded.
"Well, we take Manning, dress him up in one of our outfits and stick him aboard the
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