, do they know it?"

"You mean he smuggled himself aboard?" asked Williams.

"I'm almost sure of it!" said Strong. "And if he _is_, he's going to try
to get some sort of message out. I've got to be ready to pick it up."

Strong paused and looked up at the sky overhead, still thick with smoke.
"And if he does ask for help, I'm going to answer him with the biggest
fleet of spaceships he'll ever see in his life!"

CHAPTER 12

"Stand by, you space crawlers!" roared Bull Coxine into the microphone,
but the loud laughter and singing of the noisily celebrating prisoners
continued unabated over the intercom's loud-speakers. "Avast there!" he
bellowed again. "Stow that noise! Attention! And I want _attention_!"

Standing on the control deck of his ship, Coxine waited as the men
gradually quieted down. No longer wearing the white prison coverall, he
was dressed in a black merchant spaceman's uniform, the snug-fitting
jacket and trousers stretching tightly across his huge shoulders. He
wore a black spaceman's cap, and two paralo-ray pistol belts were
crisscrossed over his hips.

"Now listen to me!" he roared again. "Let's get one thing straight! I'm
the skipper of this ship and the first man that thinks he's smarter than
me, let him speak up!"

There was a long pause and the big man added with an ominous whisper,
"But I warn you, if one of you opens your mouth, you'll take a swim in
space!"

There was an angry murmur among the prisoners that Coxine heard over the
intercom. "Don't think I can't take care of you, the lot of you, one by
one or all at once. I cut my milk teeth on mutiny. I know how to start
one and I know how to finish one! I needed a crew and that's the only
reason you're here! Any spaceman that doesn't like the way I run things
aboard this ship, better keep it to himself, or start swimming back to
the prison asteroid!" He paused. "Well? Are you all with me?"

There was a chorus of cheers on the intercom and Coxine nodded grimly.

"All right," he continued, "now that we understand each other, I'll get
on with the business. Second-in-command to me will be Gus Wallace.
_Lieutenant_ Wallace!"

A roar of approval came over the loud-speaker.

"Third-in-command--Luther Simms! _Lieutenant_ Simms!"

There was another roar of approval as the prisoners recognized the names
of the men who had liberated them from the asteroid.

"Now, we'll handle this ship as if it were any other freighter. The
followin