I could not have been unconscious very long. The discarded disguises and snoring men indicated that we had not been spaceborne for more than a few hours. There would be a crew manning the ship and the rest would be pounding the pillow. Should I try and find them all and put them into a sounder sleep? No, too dangerous, since there was no way of knowing how many there were aboard. And I could be surprised at any time and the alarm sounded. Far better to take the control room as soon as I could. Seal it off from the rest of the ship, then head for the nearest League station and call for help. If I could let them know where I was I could always immobilize the ship and hold out until the cavalry arrived. Great idea. Put it to work.

Gun ready, I tramped the corridors to the control end of the ship. There was a door labeled “communications,” and I opened it and said good night to the man at the companel. He slumped and slept. Then the last door was before me. I took a deep breath. My flanks and rear were secured. The end of the job was in front of me. I let the breath out slowly, then opened the door.

The last thing I wanted was a shoot-out since the odds certainly were not in my favor. I stepped in and closed the door and locked it behind me before I counted the stations. Four of them—and all four occupied. Two necks were visible and I needled them and their owners relaxed. I stepped forward silently. The man in the flight engineer’s position looked around and caught a needle for his trouble. One remaining. The commander. I didn’t want to needle him since I wanted some conversation. Slipping the gun into my belt I stepped forward on tiptoe and reached for his neck.

He turned at the last moment—warned by something—but he was a little too late. I got the grip and my thumbs dug deep. His eyeballs bulged quite charmingly as he thrashed and kicked about for some seconds before going limp.

“Score sixteen to one for the good guys!” I cackled with pleasure, then did a little war dance around the room. “But finish the job, you daring devil, before celebrating too much.”

I was right, and I usually gave myself good advice. A drawer in the engineer’s desk yielded up a strong roll of wire which I used to secure the commander’s wrists and ankles, then added some more turns to tie his wrists to a pipe far from any controls. The other three men I laid out in a neat row beside him, before I tapped some questions into the computer.

It was a nice computer that worked hard to be cooperative. First it gave me our course and destination, which I memorized, and wrote down inside my wrist in case I forgot. If this destination was what I thought it was, then it had to be the home planet of these nasties. The Special Corps would be eager to know just where it was. They had a lot coming to them and I looked forward to helping deliver it. Then I asked for League bases, found the nearest, punched for a course, set it in and relaxed.

“Two hours, Jim, two short hours. Then the warpdrive cuts out and we will be within radio distance of the base. One brief radio message and that is the end of the gray men. Whoopee and chortle, chortle!”

Something itched my neck, someone looking at me, and I turned and saw that the commander was awake and glowering in my direction.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Or should I repeat it?”

“I heard you,” he said, in a drab, dull voice. Empty of emotion.

“That’s good. My name is Jim diGriz.” He remained silent. “Come, come, your name. Or do I have to look at your dogtags?”

“I am Kome. Your name is known to us. You have interfered with us before. We will kill you.”

“How nice to know that my reputation goes before me. But don’t you think your threat has an empty ring?”

“In what manner did you discover our presence?” Kome asked, ignoring my question.

“If you really want to know, you gave yourselves away. You people may be nasty but you have little imagination. The wrist-chopping-off routine works well—I should know!—so you keep on using it. I saw the marks on one of the admiral’s wrists.”

“You did this alone?”

Who was questioning whom? But I might as well be polite considering our positions. “If you must know I am all alone now. But in a few hours the League will be onto you. There were four of us back there with the goppies. All of whom I am sure have escaped now, along with the admirals you treated so badly. They will report what has happened so you will have a nice reception committee waiting when you arrive. You and your people have not been very nice.”

“You are telling the truth?”

I lost my temper at this and treated him to some words he had never heard before. I hope.

“Kome, my friend, you are making me lose my temper. I have no reason to lie to you since I hold all the cards. Now if you will shut up and stop asking me questions I will ask you some of my own because there are things I would dearly like to know. Ready?”

“I think not.”

I looked up startled, because he had raised his voice for the first time. Not in a shout, there was no anger or feelings in the words. He just spoke loudly, commandingly.

“This farce is at an end. We have found out what we need to know. You may all come in now.” It was very much like a nightmare come alive. The door opened and gray men began to shuffle in slowly. I shot them but they kept coming. And the three officers I had placed on the floor stood up and came toward me as well. I emptied the gun, threw it at them and tried to run.

They grabbed me.

Eleven

Good as I am at dirty fighting, hand-to-hand combat and general closeup nastiness, there is a limit. The limit being an apparently inexhaustible supply of the enemy. To make matters worse they really weren’t very good fighters. About all they did was grapple. It was enough. I knocked back the first two, slugged the next few, chopped a couple more—and they kept on coming. And, frankly, I was beginning to get tired. In the end they simply swarmed over me and overwhelmed me and that was that. Shackles were clicked into place around my wrists and ankles and I was tossed onto the control room floor. The sound led the battered away and the officers went back to their positions at the controls. Changing my course back to the original one, I noted with dark depression. When he had done this, Kome turned his chair about to face me.

“You tricked me,” I said. Not a bright remark but something that might get the conversation rolling.

“Of course.”

Laconic was the name of the game with the gray men. Never use a word when none would do. I pressed on, mainly out of a feeling of slight hysteria since I knew I was trapped and trapped well.

“You wouldn’t mind telling me why? If you can spare the time, that is.”

“I thought it would be obvious. We could of course use our normal mind control techniques on you, and this is what we originally planned to do. But we needed answers to some important questions at once. We have worked among the aliens for years and they have suspected nothing. We needed to know how you had discovered our presence. We of course have psychocontrol techniques for all races. It was when we were preparing brain attachments that we discovered your real identity. Metal skulls do not exist in nature. Your disguise was revealed. Your face resembled very much that of someone we have been searching for for many years. That was when I determined to use this ruse. If you were the man we were looking for we knew that your ego would not permit you to think that you had been tricked.”

“Your mother never met your father,” I sneered. A feeble response but the best I could do at the moment. Because I knew that he was right. I had been fooled right down the line.

“I knew that if you thought you had the upper hand you would answer questions that might take days to get out of you by other means. And we needed some instant answers. So we arranged the scene you played so well. Your hand weapon was charged with sterile needles. Everyone acted his role well. You best of all.”