d out. Braun--battered, and bleeding from the corner of his
mouth--motioned urgently for him to come to the door of the bus. Joe
went.

Braun stared up at him in a new fashion. Now he was neither dogged nor
fierce nor desperate to look at. Despite the beating he'd taken, he
seemed completely and somehow frighteningly tranquil. He looked like
somebody who has come to the end of torment and is past any feeling but
that of relief from suffering.

"You--" said Braun. "That girl you were with today. Her pop is Major
Holt, eh?"

Joe frowned, and reservedly said that he was.

"You tell her pop," said Braun detachedly, "this is hot tip. Hot tip.
Look two kilometers north of Shed tomorrow. He find something bad. Hot!
You tell him. Two kilometers."

"Y-yes," said Joe, his frown increasing. "But look here----"

"Be sure say hot," repeated Braun.

Rather incredibly, he smiled. Then he turned and walked quickly away.

Joe went back to his seat in the empty bus, and sat there and waited for
it to start, and tried to figure out what the message meant. Since it
was for Major Holt, it had something to do with security. And security
meant defense against sabotage. And "hot" might mean merely
_significant_, or--in these days--it might mean _something else_. In
fact, it might mean something to make your hair stand on end when
thought of in connection with the Space Platform.

Joe waited for the bus to take off. He became convinced that Braun's use
of the word "hot" did not mean merely "significant." The other meaning
was what he had in mind.

Joe's teeth tried to chatter.

He didn't let them.

6

Major Holt wasn't to be found when Joe got out to the Shed. And he
wasn't in the house in the officers'-quarters area behind it. There was
only the housekeeper, who yawned pointedly as she let Joe in. Sally was
presumably long since asleep. And Joe didn't know any way to get hold of
the Major. He assured himself that Braun was a good guy--if he weren't
he wouldn't have insisted on taking a licking before he apologized--and
he hadn't said there was any hurry. Tomorrow, he'd said. So Joe uneasily
let himself be led to a room with a cot, and he was asleep in what
seemed seconds. But just the same he was badly worried.

In fact, next morning Joe woke at a practically unearthly hour with
Braun's message pounding on his brain. He was downstairs waiting when
the housekeeper appeared. She looked startled.

"Major Holt?" he aske