Bigman's helmet suddenly rang with sound as the call flooded his left-open radio receiver.

"Hey, Shortie, get moving. There's a ship coming in."

Bigman jumped at the noise and moved straight upward, limbs flailing. He yelled, "Who're you calling Shortie?"

But the other was laughing. "Hey, how much do you charge for flying lessons, little boy?"

"I'll little boy you," screamed Bigman furiously. He had reached the peak of his parabola and was slowly and hesitatingly beginning to settle downward once more. "What's your name, wise guy? Say your name, and I'll crack your gizzard as soon as I get back and peel the suit.

"Think you can reach my gizzard?" came the mocking rejoinder, and Bigman would have exploded into tiny pieces if he had not caught sight of a ship slanting down from the horizon.

He loped in giant, clumsy strides about the leveled square mile of ground that was the asteroid's space-port, trying to judge the exact spot on which the ship would land.

It dropped down its steaming jets to a feather-touch planetary contact and when the air-locks opened and Lucky's tall, suited figure emerged, Bigman, yelling his joy, made one long leap of it, and they were together.

Conway and Henree were less effusive in their welcome, but no less joyful. Each wrung Lucky's hand as though to confirm, by sheer muscular pressure, the reality of the flesh and blood they beheld.

Lucky laughed. "Whoa, will you? Give me a chance to breathe. What's the matter? Didn't you think I was coming back?"

"Look here," said Conway, "you'd better consult us before you take off on just any old fool notion."

"Well, now, not if it's too much of a fool notion, please, or you won't let me."

"Never mind that. I can ground you for what you've done. I can have you put under detention right now. I can suspend you. I can throw you off the Council," said Conway.

"Which of them are you going to do?"

"None of them, you darned overgrown young fool. But I may beat your brains out one of these days."

Lucky turned to Augustus Henree. "You won't let him, will you?"

"Frankly, I'll help him."

"Then I give up in advance. Look, there's a gentleman here I'd like to have you meet."

Until now Hansen had remained in the background, obviously amused by the interchange of nonsense. The two older Councilmen had been too full of Lucky Starr even to be aware of his existence.

"Dr. Conway," said Lucky, "Dr. Henree, this is Mr. Joseph P. Hansen, the man whose ship I used to come back. He has been of considerable assistance to me."

The old hermit shook hands with the two scientists.

"I don't suppose you can possibly know Drs. Conway and Henree," said Lucky. The hermit shook his head.

"Well," he went on, "they're important officials in the Council of Science. After you've eaten and had a chance to rest, they'll talk to you and help you, I'm sure."

An hour later the two Councilmen faced Lucky with somber expressions. Dr. Henree tamped tobacco into his pipe with a little finger, and smoked quietly as he listened to Lucky's accounts of his adventures with the pirates.

"Have you told this to Bigman?" he asked.

"I've just spent some time talking to him," said Lucky.

"And he didn't assault you for not taking him?"

"He wasn't pleased," Lucky admitted.

But Conway's mind was more seriously oriented. "A Sirian-designed ship, eh?" he mused.

"Undoubtedly so," said Lucky. "At least we have that piece of information."

"The information wasn't worth the risk," said Conway, dryly. "I'm much more disturbed over another piece of information we have now. It's obvious that the Sirian organization penetrates into the Council of Science itself."

Henree nodded gravely. "Yes, I saw that, too. Very bad."

Lucky said, "How do you make that out?"

"Galaxy, boy, it's obvious," growled Conway. "I'll admit that we had a large construction crew working on the ship and that even with the best intentions careless slips of information can take place. It remains truth, though, that the fact of the booby-trapping and particularly the exact manner of the fusing were known only to Council members and not too many of those. Somewhere in that small group is a spy, yet I could have sworn that all were faithful." He shook his head. "I still can't believe otherwise."

"You don't have to," said Lucky.

"Oh? And why not?"

"Because the Sirian contact was quite temporary. The Sirian Embassy got their information from me"

Chapter 8

Bigman Takes Over

"Indirectly, of course, through one of their known spies," he amplified, as the two older men stared at him in shocked astonishment.

"I don't understand you at all," said Henree in a low voice. Conway was obviously speechless.

"It was necessary. I had to introduce myself to the pirates without suspicion. If they found me on what they thought was a mapping ship, they would have shot me out of hand. On the other hand, if they found me on a booby-trapped ship the secret of which they had stumbled on by what seemed a stroke of fortune, they would have taken me at face value as a stowaway. Don't you see? On a mapping ship I'm only a member of the crew that didn't get away in time. On a booby trap, I'm a poor jerk who didn't realize what he was stowing away on."

"They might have shot you anyway. They might have seen through your double-cross and considered you a spy. In fact, they almost did."

"True! They almost did," admitted Lucky.

Conway finally exploded. "And what about the original plan. Were we or were we not going to explode one of their bases? When I consider the months we spent on the construction of the Atlas, the money that went into it-"

"What good would it have done to explode one of their bases? We spoke about a huge hangar of pirate ships, but actually that was only wishful thinking. An organization based upon the asteroids would have to be decentralized. The pirates probably don't have more than three or four ships in any one place. There wouldn't be room for more. Exploding three or four ships would mean very little compared with what would have been accomplished if I had succeeded in penetrating their organization."

"But you didn't succeed," said Conway. "With all your fool risks, you didn't succeed."

"Unfortunately the pirate captain who took the Atlas was too suspicious, or perhaps too intelligent for us. I'll try not to underestimate them again. But it's not all loss. We know for a fact that Sirius is behind them. In addition, we have my hermit friend."

"He won't help us," said Conway. "From what you've said about him, it sounds as though he were only interested in having as little to do with the pirates as possible. So what can he know?"

"He may be able to tell us more than he himself thinks is possible," said Lucky coolly. "For instance, there's one piece of information he can give us that will enable me to continue efforts at working against piracy from the inside."

"You're not going out there again," said Conway hastily.

"I don't intend to," said Lucky.

Conway's eyes narrowed. "Where's Bigman?"

"On Ceres. Don't worry. In fact," and a shadow crossed Lucky's face, "he should be here by now. The delay is beginning to bother me a little."

John Bigman Jones used his special pass card to get past the guard at the door to the Control Tower. He was muttering to himself as he half-ran along the corridors.