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"Just hang on and watch, sir," replied Tom, keeping his eyes on the scanner where he could see the space torpedo trailing them. Over and over, Tom kept slamming the ship into sharp left turns, while the torpedo followed in an ever-narrowing circle.

"All right, Tom!" yelled Roger again. "Give it the same thing on the right and the down-plane of the ecliptic!"

"Check!" answered Tom, reversing his controls and sending the ship corkscrewing through space on an opposite course.

Connel grabbed the arms of his chair and gasped, "You kids are space happy!"

"Those gyros are so perfect, sir," said Tom, working the controls quickly and smoothly, "that the only way you can throw them off balance is to confuse them."

"Confuse them!" exclaimed Connel.

"Yes, sir," said Tom. "It's a theory Roger and I worked out together. No gyro is perfect, and if you can get it bouncing back and forth in extreme turns, it will be thrown out of balance. Then all we have to do is make the torpedo miss once and it won't come back."

"Heaven help us all!" was Connel's groaning reply.

"On the ball, Tom!" cried Roger. "She's closing in on us!"

"I see her," replied Tom calmly. "Hang on, everybody. I'm going to turn this ship inside out!"

Jerking the controls, Tom threw the ship into a mad, whirling spin, subjecting the vessel to the most severe strain tests it would ever undergo. The hull groaned and creaked, and badly fitted equipment tore loose and clattered across the deck. Suddenly the young cadet leveled the ship.

"Nose braking rockets, Astro!" he called.

"Braking rockets, aye!" acknowledged the Venusian over the intercom.

On the power deck, Astro jammed the forward drive closed and slammed open the nose rockets. The ship trembled, bucked, and finally came to a shuddering stop before it started a reverse course, accelerating quickly.

"Here it comes!" yelled Roger.

As Connel and Tom watched tensely, the space torpedo loomed large and menacing on the scanner, and then, as they held their breaths, it whistled past the silvery hull of the ship, with less than two feet to spare!

Sighing deeply, Tom brought the ship back to level flight. "We're O.K. now, sir," he said. "Her gyros are out. She won't come back."

"By the craters of Luna!" Connel suddenly exploded. "The Solar Guard spends a fortune to develop a foolproof space torpedo and two hot-shot cadets come along and get away from the blasted thing! Why haven't you told this to anyone before?"

"Why—er—" stammered Tom, "we've never had the chance to prove it, sir."

Behind them, the power-deck hatch suddenly opened and Astro stepped in. "Nice work, Tom!" he called.

"And as for you, you Venusian ape," roared Connel, "don't you realize that you can blow a reactor tube by throwing so much power into a ship without energizing the cooling pumps first?"

Astro smiled. "Not if you open the by-pass, sir," he said, "and feed directly off the pump reservoir. The gas cools the tube and at the same time expands itself and adds to the power thrust."

At Astro's easy reply Connel could only stand openmouthed in amazement. Again, one of the three cadets of the Polaris unit had developed a revolutionary procedure that even top rocket scientists would be proud to call their own.

Winking at Tom, Astro turned away and suddenly noticed Barret sprawled on the deck, unconscious.

"What happened to him?" asked the big Venusian.

"Oh, I forgot all about him," said Tom. "Guess he didn't get into an acceleration chair in time. Better get some more water."

"We haven't time for him now!" snapped Connel. "Strap him in good and tight. We've got to find out where that torpedo came from."

As though in answer to the major's order, there was a sudden call over the ship's intercom.

"Radar bridge to control deck, check in!" There was a note of alarm in Roger's voice.

Tom jumped to the control panel to reply.

"Control deck, aye!" he snapped into the microphone.

"There's a spaceship to starboard!" called Roger. "Distance twenty miles, fifteen degrees up on the plane of the ecliptic. And I swear she's maneuvering to fire