Then you ask Tom to send a
plane back to drop off my cap and rotor. And tell him to send a
walkie-talkie, too.

"Now, I got a real good idea what game you boys are playin' and it's
fine by me. Only don't get into my game. Stay on the base. You mean
well, but you could cross me up when it would hurt most. Some day, after
we have the one we want, we'll compare notes. Now let's get goin'. You
kids are goin' to have a long, long drive. I'm sendin' you home by way
of Pahrump Valley."

"It's shorter directly back to the base," Scotty objected.

"Sure. And you'll attract more attention that way. Go through the valley
and back to Route 95, and you'll enter from the front gate. Then who'll
know you didn't spend the night in Vegas?"

It took only ten minutes to get the parts from Deadrock's jeep, which
was parked in a ravine, invisible to anything except a low-flying plane.
They said good-by to the "prospector" at the edge of town.

"Got the map in your heads? You won't get lost?" Deadrock asked.

"We'll be fine," Rick assured him.

"All right. Get goin'. And, boys--look out for sidewinders!"

CHAPTER XII

Servomotors Missing

Rick and Scotty took time to shower and change, then left on their
prearranged errands. Scotty headed for his own department, to check all
travel to the north since the Orion firing. Rick set out to find John
Gordon.

The Spindrift scientist was not in his office, nor could Rick find him
around the base. Finally he took the jeep and headed for the firing
area.

There was considerable activity down on the lake bed. At a pad close to
the blockhouse a tower was under construction. That was the launching
tower for Cetus. But of even more personal interest to Rick was the
presence of a gantry crane at a third firing pad where one of the
special rocket-transport trucks was just putting the first stage of
Pegasus into place!

It was at the Pegasus pad that he found Gordon, in conversation with
Gee-Gee Gould, Dick Earle, Frank Miller, Cliff Damon, head of the
instrumentation section, and Lars Jannsson, head of the Pegasus
propulsion section.

"We'll start security immediately," Gordon was saying as Rick walked up.
"Tom Preston will arrange for a guard around the clock. We'll also
arrange an exchange-badge system, so no one gets inside the fence
without handing in his own badge and getting a special one. That way,
we'll have absolute control on who comes and goes."

Gee-Gee Gould saw Ric