Somehow they made that journey, being greeted with raucous screams from the Hoobat.  Furiously Dane slapped the cage, setting it to swinging and so silencing the creature which stared at him with round, malignant eyes as he got the Captain to bed.

Only four of them on their feet now, Dane thought bleakly as he left the cabin.  If Rip came out of it in time they could land—­Dane’s breath caught as he made himself face up to the fact that Shannon might be ill, that it might be up to him to bring the Queen in for a landing.  And in where?  The Terra quarantine was Luna City on the Moon.  But let them signal for a set-down there—­let them describe what had happened and they might face death as a plague ship.

Wearily he climbed down to the mess cabin to discover Weeks and Ali there before him.  They did not look up as he entered.

“Old Man’s got it,” he reported.

“Rip?” was Ali’s crossing question.

“Asleep.  He passed out—­”

“What!” Weeks swung around.

“Worn out,” Dane amended.  “Captain fed in a pilot tape before he gave up.”

“So—­now we are three,” was Ali’s comment.  “Where do we set down—­Luna City?”

“If they let us,” Dane hinted at the worst.

“But they’ve got to let us!” Weeks exclaimed.  “We can’t just wander around out here—­”

“It’s been done,” Ali reminded them brutally and that silenced Weeks.

“Did the Old Man set Luna?” After a long pause Ali inquired.

“I didn’t check,” Dane confessed.  “He was giving out and I had to get him to his bunk.”

“It might be well to know.”  The Engineer-apprentice got up, his movements lacking much of the elastic spring which was normally his.  When he climbed to control both the others followed him.

Ali’s slender fingers played across a set of keys and in the small screen mounting on the computer a set of figures appeared.  Dane took up the master course book, read the connotation and blinked.

“Not Luna?” Ali asked.

“No.  But I don’t understand.  This must be for somewhere in the asteroid belt.”

Ali’s lips stretched into a pale caricature of a smile.  “Good for the Old Man, he still had his wits about him, even after the bug bit him!”

“But why are we going to the asteroids?” Weeks asked reasonably enough.  “There’re Medics at Luna City—­they can help us—­”

“They can handle known diseases,” Ali pointed out.  “But what of the Code?”

Weeks dropped into the Com-tech’s place as if some of the stiffening had vanished from his thin but sturdy legs.  “They wouldn’t do that—­” he protested, but his eyes said that he knew that they might—­they well might.

“Oh, no?  Face the facts, man,” Ali sounded almost savage.  “We come from a frontier planet, we’re a plague ship—­”

He did not have to underline that.  They all knew too well the danger in which they now stood.