lare is in progress. Any personnel outside the ship should get in
as rapidly as possible. Personnel in the rim have seven minutes in
which to secure their posts and report to the flare-shield area in the
hub. Spin deceleration will take effect in three minutes; and we are
counting on my mark towards deceleration. Mark, three minutes."

The Security officer squeezed the trigger of the "bug" tighter in a
vain effort to force it and himself forward at a higher speed.

The lesser shielding of the Hot Rod control room would not provide a
sufficient safety factor even for the X rays that he knew were already
around him; but he must supervise the security of the shutdown; and he
could only be very thankful that he was already nearly there and would
not have to make the entire round trip under emergency conditions.

The scuttlebug automatically reversed and began slowing for the end of
its run--tripped by a block signal set in the ribbon cable. As it came
to a stop at the end of the long anchor tube, Steve dismounted and
kicked over the short remaining distance, which was spanned only by a
slack cable to permit the inertial orientation servos of Hot Rod
unhindered freedom to maintain their constant tracking of the solar
disk.

Passing through the air lock of the control room, he reflected that
his exposure would probably be sufficient to give a touch of nausea in
the first half hour.

Inside Hot Rod control there was little excitement. The equipment was
being turned off in the standard approved safety procedures necessary
to turn control over to the laser communication beam which would put
the project under Earth control at Thule Base, Greenland, until the
emergency was over.

This separate, low-power control beam, focused on Thule Base nearly
eighty miles away from the main focus of Hot Rod on its initial
target, carried all of the communications and telemetry necessary for
the close co-ordination between Thule and the project.

As Elbertson entered, the Hot Rod communications officer was switching
each of the control panels in turn to Earth control, while Dr.
Benjamin Koblensky, project chief, stood directly behind him,
supervising the process. Elbertson took up his post beside Dr.
Koblensky, replacing the Security aide who had had the past shift.
"Suit up," he said to the man briefly.

As the communications officer completed the turnover, and the other
five scientists in the lab left their posts to suit up, the com