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Strong headed for the door. "But why?" he asked himself. "Why in this particular building?"

He strode out of the room and inched his way across the outer room toward the front door, again narrowly missing the open trap door.

Once outside, he made his way along the side of the building in the direction that Morgan had taken. When he reached the corner, he could see the black bulk of the Space Knight a hundred yards away. He ran toward the base of the ship and met Morgan coming toward him.

"Find anything, Sergeant?" he called.

"Nothing, sir," replied Morgan. "The ship is ready to blast off and her cargo holds are full. But that's all."

"Full of what?"

"I couldn't see, sir. The main hatch was locked and I could only see through the viewport. But it just looked like general cargo to me."

"Couldn't have been crystal?"

"It might have been, sir. It was pretty dark in the hold but it looked like a lot of boxes to me."

"You don't put crystal blocks in boxes," said Strong.

"Sometimes they do, sir. The more expensive grades are crated, so that the surfaces won't get scratched. Pieces that are going to be used for outer facings on a building, for instance."

"All right, Sergeant. But I found something back in that building that is going to prove very interesting."

"The cadets, sir?"

"No. An illegal use of oxygen!"

Quickly Strong explained his discovery, concluding, "Come on. We're going back in there for a closer inspection!"

"But we can't, sir," said Morgan.

"Why not?"

"We only have enough oxygen left in our tanks to get us back to the cleared area."

"Blast it!" growled Strong. "Aren't there any masks aboard the ship?"

"No, sir," replied Morgan.

"Very well, then. The only thing we can do is go back and bring out a searching party in force." Strong turned and walked rapidly away. "Come on, Sergeant, I think we're on the way to answering a lot of questions about the failure of the screens."

Almost running, the two spacemen disappeared into the swirling mist of deadly gases.

No sooner were they out of sight than Tom Corbett and Astro, faces covered with oxygen masks, emerged from the warehouse and headed toward the ship, Miles and Brett close behind them with paralo-ray guns leveled at their backs.

CHAPTER 16

Roger Manning opened his eyes, then closed them. He lay perfectly still and listened. The sound he heard was the unmistakable blasting roar of a spaceship. But there was another sound, much closer. In fact, it was in the room with him.

He opened one eye to see Quent Miles moving about in the one-room, airtight space hut which had been his jail for the last week. Miles was throwing clothes into a space bag, keeping a wary eye on Roger, sprawled on the bunk. Hoisting the bag to his shoulder, Miles closed the face plate of his space helmet, turned to the air lock, and stepped inside, slamming the portal behind him. From the bunk, Roger could hear the hissing of the change of pressure inside the lock from normal to the vacuum of space outside.

The entire week had been a time of waiting and wondering. He couldn't understand Miles' actions in taking him prisoner the moment before blast-off from Earth, and then keeping him at the asteroid, seemingly giving up all chances of winning the race.

Roger waited until he was sure that the black-clad spaceman had gone, then he sat up and worked desperately on the thin metal chain binding his wrists. He had been working on one of the links ever since his arrival at Miles' strange asteroid base, scraping it against the rough metal edge of one of the legs of his bunk. Two days before, he had succeeded in wearing it down to a point where he could snap it easily when the opportunity came for him to make a break. But so far the chance had not presented itself. He had been kept prisoner in the space hut, and Miles had pushed his food in through a vent in the air lock. Now, however, with the sound of the spaceship outside, the cadet decided it was time for action.

Working quickly, Roger snapped the link and tore off the chain, freeing