the sun.
Fragments of a solar lamp, to keep the plants growing at night, lay in
the shambles.

Rodan and Dutch were pretty well knocked out from Frank Nelsen's
footwork. Now Dave Lester and Helen Rodan came running. Lester's face
was all stunned surprise. Helen was yelling.

"I saw you do it--you--murderer!"

When she kneeled beside her father, Frank got her gun, too. He felt an
awful regret for a plan whose results far surpassed his intentions, but
there was no good in showing it, now. Someone had to be in command in a
situation which already looked black.

"Frank--I didn't suppose--" Lester stammered. "Now--what are we going to
do?"

"All that we can do--try to get out of here!" Frank snapped back at him.

With some shreds of stellene, he tied Dutch's arms behind his back, and
lashed his feet together. Then he pulled Helen away from Rodan.

"Hold her, Les," he ordered. "Maybe I overplayed my hand, but just the
same, I still think I'm the best to say what's to be done and maybe get
us out of a jam, and I can't have Helen or Rodan or anybody else doing
any more cockeyed things to screw matters up even worse than they are."

Nelsen trussed Rodan up, too, then searched Rodan's thigh pouch and
found a bunch of keys.

"You come along with me, Les and Helen," he said. "First we'll find out
what we've got left to work with."

He investigated the rocket. That the blast had toppled it over, wasn't
the worst. When he unlocked its servicing doors, he found that Rodan had
removed a vital part from the nuclear exciters of the motors. His and
Lester's blastoff drums were still in the freight compartment, but the
ionics and air-restorers had been similarly rendered unworkable. Their
oxygen and water flasks were gone. Only their bubbs were intact, but
there was nothing with which to inflate them.

When Frank examined the sun-powered tractor, he found that tiny platinum
plates had been taken from the thermocouple units. It was clear that,
with paranoid thoroughness, Rodan had concentrated all capacity to move
from the camp's vicinity in himself. He had probably locked up the
missing items in the supply dome, and now the exploding dynamite had
ruined them.

Exploring the plain, Nelsen even found quite a few of the absent parts,
all useless. Only one oxygen flask and one water flask remained intact.
Here was a diabolical backfiring of schemes, all around.

Returning to Rodan and Dutch, he examined their Archers through th