t is it?"

"Come as fast as you can. Just caught sight of three distant figures
flying straight towards here. It's Ku Sui, returning!"

CHAPTER V

_"My Congratulations, Captain Carse!"_

A few minutes later the trap was in readiness.

It had been swiftly planned and executed, and it promised well. Both
the inner and outer doors of the smaller port-lock lay ajar. Hawk
Carse was gone from view. The only figure visible there was that which
lay sprawled face-downward on the ground close to the inner door of
the port-lock.

The figure seemed to have been stricken down in sudden death. It was
clad in the trim yellow smock of a coolie of Ku Sui. It was limp, its
arms and legs spreadeagled, and it lay there as mute evidence that the
dome of the asteroid had been attacked.

To one entering from outside, the figure was that of a dead coolie.
The coolie that had worn those clothes was dead; his clothes now
covered the wiry length of freckle-faced Ban Wilson.

Ban played the game well. His face lay in the ground, pointed away
from the lock, so he could not see what was going to happen behind
him: but before the Hawk had directed him to take off his suit and don
the yellow smock, he had glimpsed, rising swiftly over the
southernmost barrier of hills that edged the valley, three black dots
coming fast toward the asteroid in straight, disciplined flight, and
he knew that the leader of the three was Dr. Ku Sui.

As he lay limp on the ground, playing his important part as the decoy
of the trap, he knew that his life depended on the action and the
skill and the timing of Hawk Carse. But he did not worry about that.
He had implicit faith in the Hawk, and trusted his life to his
judgment without a tremor.

Still, it was hard for Ban to throttle down his excessively nervous
nature and maintain the dead man pose for the long silent minutes that
crawled by before there came any sound from behind. The Jupiter-light,
flooding down on him from the glittering blue sky above, was hot and
growing hotter, and of course he began to itch. Had he had the freedom
of his limbs, he would not have itched, he knew; it happened only when
he had to keep absolutely still; he cursed the phenomenon to himself.
Minute after minute, and no sound to tell him what was happening
behind, or how close the three approaching figures had come, or
whether Carse was at all visible or not--and the mounting, maddening
itch right in the middle of his back!