oubles out on them. And I avoided Goil in
particular, for another reason. I even ate late so I could eat alone.

Just about the time I finished, Artie's voice came over the system,
saying:

"Attention, everyone. Flash news item just received. There is a
freighter out of control enroute from Ganymede to Mars. Unless the
freighter can be brought under control, it will have to be abandoned."

So what, I thought. It's happened before. So some company loses a
freighter. They're insured.

Artie's voice went right on uninterrupted by my sour thoughts. "The
present course of the ship is interception of Mars. Unless the course
can be changed, the ship might plunge into Mars."

So what again? They're still insured. The crew can abandon ship in the
lifeboats. So the ship makes a microscopic dent in Mars. It's better
than 99% wasteland.

"The exact point at which impact with Mars will be made is being
computed right now. What makes the whole thing terrible is that the
freighter is loaded with fissionable material exported from Ganymede.
If the ship is not stopped or diverted before it reaches Mars, the
impact will bring all the units of fissionable material into super
critical proximity."

And that, I realized, will not be good for Mars because the thin
atmosphere of the planet will let the ship get right through to the
surface before the tough skin could get much more than cherry red. And
the ship would bury itself in the soft red soil (how deep?) before the
impact sandwiched the containers of fissionable material enough for
detonation proximity.

Whew! My interest began to increase.

That was Artie Jones giving the news. He was like that, and it was not
part of his regular job. He did it because he wanted to keep people up
with the latest. He was Computers and Communications engineer.

He finished off by saying, "Long-range scopes are looking for the ship
now. As soon as it is located and magnifiers thrown into the circuit,
it will be 'vised. I'll have the signals relayed to the rec room
trideo.

"It is, by the way, one of our own company freighters."

* * * * *

Alarms clanged in my head. Yowee!

I raced for the rec room. Nearly everybody else was doing the same.
Orrin was playing a half-hearted game of cribbage with Gus. Goil sat
by himself in a corner reading. Willy was not there.

Randy and Manuel were already arguing about how much fissionable a
freighter like that could car