“Let’s go straight there,” prompted Mowry. “It will cut your risks and I’m willing to take a chance on being nabbed. I’m taking the chance anyway, aren’t I?”

“Nuts to that,” retorted the captain. “We’re so close that their detectors are tracking us already. We’re picking up their identification-calls and we can’t answer, not knowing their code. Pretty soon it will sink into their heads that we’re hostile. They’ll send up a shower of proximity-fused missiles, as usual too late. The moment we dive below their radar horizon they’ll start a full-scale aerial search covering five hundred miles around the point where we disappeared.” He gave Mowry a warning frown. “And you, chum, would be dead centre of that circle.”

“Looks like you’ve done this job a few times before.” prompted Mowry, hoping for a revealing response.

Refusing to take the bait, the captain continued, “Once we’re running just above tree-top level they can’t track us radar-wise. So we’ll duck down a couple of thousand miles from your dropping-point and make for there on a cockeyed. course. It’s my responsibility to dump you where you want to be put without betraying you to the whole lousy world. If I don’t succeed the entire trip has been wasted. Leave this to me, will you?”

“Sure,” agreed Mowry, abashed. “Anything you say.”

They went out, leaving him to brood. Presently the alarm-gong clanged upon the cabin wall, he grabbed handholds and hung on while the ship made a couple of violent swerves, first one way, then the other. He could see nothing, hear nothing save the dull moan of steering-jets, but his imagination pictured a cluster of fifty ominous vapour-trails rising from below, fifty long, explosive cylinders eagerly sniffing around for the scent of alien metal.

Eleven more times the alarm sounded, followed at once by aerial acrobatics. By now the ship resounded to the soft whistle of passing atmosphere which built up to a faint howl as it thickened.