“Let us hope we can pull off Rip’s plan—­”

“We’d better.  What about the Big Burn anyway, Thorson?  Is it as tough as the stories say?”

“We don’t know what it’s like.  It’s never been explored—­or at least those who tried to explore its interior never reported in afterwards.  As far as I know it’s left strictly alone.”

“Is it still all ’hot’?”

“Parts of it must be.  But all—­we don’t know.”

With the bottle of soup in his hand Dane climbed to Jellico’s cabin.  And he was so occupied with the problem at hand that at first he did not see what was happening in the small room.  He had braced the Captain up into a half-sitting position and was patiently ladling the liquid into his mouth a spoonful at a time when a thin squeak drew his attention to the top of Jellico’s desk.

From the half open lid of a microtape compartment something long and dark projected, beating the air feebly.  Dane, easing the Captain back on the bunk, was going to investigate when the Hoobat broke its unnatural quiet of the past few days with an ear-splitting screech of fury.  Dane struck at the bottom of its cage—­the move its master always used to silence it—­But this time the results were spectacular.

The cage bounced up and down on the spring which secured it to the ceiling of the cabin and the blue feathered horror slammed against the wires.  Either its clawing had weakened them, or some fault had developed, for they parted and the Hoobat came through them to land with a sullen plop on the desk.  Its screams stopped as suddenly as they had begun and it scuttled on its spider-toad legs to the microtape compartment, acting with purposeful dispatch and paying no attention to Dane.

Its claws shot out and with ease it extracted from the compartment a creature as weird as itself—­one which came fighting and of which Dane could not get a very clear idea.  Struggling they battled across the surface of the desk and flopped to the floor.  There the hunted broke loose from the hunter and fled with fantastic speed into the corridor.  And before Dane could move the Hoobat was after it.

He gained the passage just in time to see Queex disappear down the ladder, clinging with the aid of its pincher claws, apparently grimly determined to catch up with the thing it pursued.  And Dane went after them.

There was no sign of the creature who fled on the next level.  But Dane made no move to recapture the blue hunter who squatted at the foot of the ladder staring unblinkingly into space.  Dane waited, afraid to disturb the Hoobat.  He had not had a good look at the thing which had run from Queex—­but he knew it was something which had no business aboard the Queen.  And it might be the disturbing factor they were searching for.  If the Hoobat would only lead him to it—­

The Hoobat moved, rearing up on the tips of its six legs, its neckless head slowly revolving on its puffy shoulders.  Along the ridge of its backbone its blue feathers were rising into a crest much as Sinbad’s fur rose when the cat was afraid or angry.  Then, without any sign of haste, it crawled over and began descending the ladder once more, heading toward the lower section which housed the Hydro.