* * * * *
The name _Set_ Miko glowed upon the door. It was in a transverse
corridor similar to A22. The corridor was forward of the lounge: it
opened off the small circular library.
The library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected
lights from the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder case.
The door of Miko's room was in sight.
I waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered. Then I realized that
doubtless the conspirators were already there. I set my tiny
eavesdropper on the library floor beside me; connected its little
battery; focused its projector. Was Miko's room insulated? I could not
tell. There was a small ventilating grid above the door. Across its
opening, if the room was insulated, a blue sheen of radiance would be
showing. And there would be a faint hum. But from this distance I
could not see or hear such details, and I was afraid to approach
closer. Once in the transverse corridor, I would have no place to
hide, no way of escape. If anyone approached Miko's door, I would be
trapped.
I threw the current into my apparatus. I prayed, if it met
interference, that the slight sound would pass unnoticed. George
Prince had said that he would make opportunity to disconnect the
room's insulation. He had evidently done so. I picked up the interior
sounds at once; my headphone vibrated with them. And with trembling
fingers on the little dial between my knees as I crouched in the
darkness behind the cylinder case, I synchronized.
"Johnson is a fool." It was Miko's voice. "We must have the
passwords."
"He got them from the radio room." A man's voice: I puzzled over it at
first, then recognized it. Rance Rankin.
Miko said, "He is a fool. Walking around this ship as though with
letters blazoned on his forehead, 'Watch me.... I need watching.' Hah!
No wonder they apprehended him!"
Rankin's voice said: "He would have turned the papers over to us. I
would not blame him too much. What harm--"
"Oh, I'll release him," Miko declared. "What harm? That braying ass
did us plenty of harm. He has lost the passwords. Better he had left
them in the radio room."
Moa was in the room. Her voice said, "We've got to have them. The
_Planetara_, upon such an important voyage as this, might be watched."
"No doubt it is," Rankin said quietly. "We ought to have the
passwords. When we are in control of this ship...."
It sent a shiver through me. Were they planning to try and seize the
_Planetara_? Now? It seemed so.
"Johnson undoubtedly memorized them," Moa was saying. "When we get him
out--"
"Hahn is to do that, at the signal." Miko added, "George could do it
better, perhaps."