while at least," Johnny said. "That
hole in the wall is going to set them back a couple of steps, too."

"But they'll sound the alarm, at least," Tom said.

"You bet they will! They'll have every man on the crew shaking down the
ship for us. But they may not think of the ventilators until they can't
find us anywhere else."

"But sooner or later they're bound to think of it."

"That's true," Johnny said. "Unless they keep seeing us in the ship. The
way I figure it, this crew has been on battle stations plenty of times.
They'll be able to search the whole ship in half an hour. We're just
going to have to show ourselves ... at least enough to keep them
searching."

"Well, what if they do think of the ventilators?" Greg said. "They'd
still have a time finding us."

"Maybe, but don't underestimate Tawney. He might just mask up his crew
and flood the tubes with cyanide."

They thought about that for a minute. There was no sound here but their
own breathing, and the low chug-chug-chug of the pumps somewhere deep in
the ship. Momentarily they expected to hear the raucous clang of the
alarm bell, as some crew member or another walked into the lounge and
found them gone. But so far there was no sign they had been discovered
missing. "No," Johnny said finally, "if we just hide out in here, and
hope for a chance at one of the scout ships, they'll find us eventually.
But we've got three big advantages, if we can figure out how to use
them. That fancy gun, for one. A way to get around the ship, for
another ... and the fact that there's one more of us than they count on."
He flipped on his pocket flash, began drawing lines on the dusty floor of
the shaft. "My idea is to keep them so busy fighting little fires that
they won't have a chance to worry about where the big one is."

He drew a rough outline-sketch of the organization of the ship. "This
look right to you, from what you've seen?" he asked Tom.

"Pretty much," Tom said. "There are more connecting tubes."

"All the better. We want to get the generators with our little toy here
first. That'll darken the ship, and put the blowers out of commission in
case they think of using gas. Also, it will cut out their computers and
missile-launching rigs, which might give us a chance to get a scout-ship
away in one piece if we could get aboard one."

"All right, the generators are first," Tom said. "But then what? There
are four hundred men on this ship. They'll have every airloc