it?"

"Captain, there's no saboteur...." Mike began, but the captain
interrupted.

"Gentlemen, I'm not asking you to be the judge of that. If they are
saboteurs, is there any way that they can activate Hot Rod?"

"Oh, they could have storage batteries aboard, I suppose." Mike didn't
even pretend to be excited.

"Then we will assume they have, Mr. Blackhawk." The tone of the
captain's voice told Mike he'd better darned well believe in those
saboteurs or tell the captain the truth--and that quickly. "Now,
assuming Hot Rod can be activated, we will also assume that their
first aim will be to control the wheel. They would, therefore, aim at
the hub and issue an ultimatum."

"They might aim at a target on Earth, and issue an ultimatum to us."
Mike would play the game.

"No. We would refuse such an ultimatum. They would aim at us. Can you
prevent that?"

Mike thought hard. He'd better come up with an answer to that one,
saboteurs or no.

"If they shot through the hub, they'd hit our shielding water and
explode the hub-hull. That would wreck the wheel, and they'd need the
wheel. The only place they could safely shoot us would be the
passenger spokes, and that would take some pretty fine target
shooting--with only one laser bank. They could do it though," he said
thoughtfully.

"Assume, Mr. Blackhawk, that if they couldn't hit the passenger
spokes, they'd be willing to destroy the wheel in order to gain
control. Is there any way to prevent that?"

Mike stood completely silent for almost a minute. Then he grinned.
"Sure," he said. "If we turned the rim towards Hot Rod, they couldn't
fire into the rim without hitting that shielding--and that would
create an explosion, even from their smallest possible shot, that
would almost inevitably take Hod Rod with it. If we turn the lab so
that only the rim is towards Hot Rod, it's suicide to shoot us."

"You will swing the rim of the wheel into that alignment as rapidly as
it can possibly be done." The captain's voice practically lifted the
two men off the bridge, and they were on their way to the engineering
quarters with every appearance of the urgency they should have felt if
they had not known who--or rather what--was the real saboteur.

* * * * *

Then Mike heard Ishie's soft voice from behind him, slightly
breathless. "At that, you'd better swing the rim and swing her fast,
Mike. The captain sure 'nuff believes in his saboteurs, and it