a regrettable accident which will require you to
evacuate the Station. Temporarily, I hope."

"Huh?"

"As I told Mr. Chung and Miss Page, a nuclear missile has escaped us.
If it explodes, the radiation will be lethal, even in the heart of the
asteroid."

"What ... what--" Blades could only gobble at him.

"Fortunately, the _Pallas Castle_ is here. She can take your whole
complement aboard and move to a safe distance while we search for the
object."

"How the _devil_?"

Hulse allowed himself a look of exasperation. "Evidently I'll have to
repeat myself to you. Very well. You know we have had to make some
adjustments on our launchers. What you did not know was the reason.
Under the circumstances, I think it's permissible to tell you that
several of them have a new and secret, experimental control system.
One of our missions on this cruise was to carry out field tests. Well,
it turned out that the system is still full of, ah, bugs. Gunnery
Command has had endless trouble with it, has had to keep tinkering the
whole way from Earth.

"Half an hour ago, while Commander Warburton was completing a
reassembly--lower ranks aren't allowed in the test turrets--something
happened. I can't tell you my guess as to what, but if you want to
imagine that a relay got stuck, that will do for practical purposes. A
missile was released under power. Not a dummy--the real thing. And
release automatically arms the war head."

* * * * *

The news was like a hammerblow. Blades spoke an obscenity. Sweat
sprang forth under his arms and trickled down his ribs.

"No such thing was expected," Hulse went on. "It's an utter disaster,
and the designers of the system aren't likely to get any more
contracts. But as matters were, no radar fix was gotten on it, and it
was soon too far away for gyrogravitic pulse detection. The thrust
vector is unknown. It could be almost anywhere now.

"Well, naval missiles are programmed to reverse acceleration if they
haven't made a target within a given time. This one should be back in
less than six hours. If it first detects our ship, everything is all
right. It has optical recognition circuits that identify any North
American warcraft by type, disarm the war head, and steer it home.
But, if it first comes within fifty kilometers of some other
mass--like this asteroid or one of the companion rocks--it will
detonate. We'll make every effort to intercept, but space is big.
You