n Gordon gave Preston the answer. "Not important enough to risk not
catching all of them. The other stations are tracking."

"Get 'em," Preston ordered.

"Right. Soon as it's a little lighter. We don't want one wriggling away
in the dark."

Rick looked outside. Dawn was just breaking. It would be light enough in
ten minutes. The ten minutes took an hour to pass. Then he had to wait
ten more, until Deadrock came back on the air.

"They're all yours, Tom. I fired a shot and they looked up. Then Scotty
and Hank fired over their heads from each side and they saw they were
trapped. They upped hands, polite as you please, and we moved in to put
the cuffs on."

Scotty elaborated later. Deadrock had waited until some of the stolen
goods had changed hands before firing his warning shot. That was for
purposes of evidence.

Pancho and Mac maintained a stony silence, but Dusty Rhoads was eager to
talk. The other two had threatened to kill him, he claimed, and had
forced him to steal. No one believed this, but Dusty's tale at least
showed the connection between Miller and the thefts.

Pancho had stumbled across evidence that Miller was the Earthman, Dusty
said. Dusty didn't know what the evidence was, and Pancho refused to
tell him. But when Big Mac heard about it, he accused Miller, and
promised to keep silent in exchange for co-operation. He demanded to be
told when a shoot was to be sabotaged. Miller agreed, in exchange for
part of the profits. Mac, Pancho, and Dusty had not participated in any
way in the sabotage.

The other men, who had captured Rick and Scotty at Steamboat, proved to
be well-known thieves with prison records. One admitted they had
depended on Mac and Pancho to tip them off to any trap that might be
waiting, but of course Preston had made sure no inkling reached Mac and
Pancho that they were under suspicion. For that reason, the thieves had
driven without hesitation to Careless Mesa to pick up the latest batch
of stolen equipment--and had received the shock of their lives.

Rick thought that the trail of the Earthman had been a pretty devious
one, complicated as it was by a gang of thieves as well as the saboteur
himself.

He wondered briefly if Miller's identity would ever have come to light
if he hadn't been trapped in the rocket. But the next moment he realized
it would have, eventually, because the thieves were known, and at least
the janitor would have talked.

Rick and Scotty still had their