Part 2

"It's the farmer," he exclaimed, in surprise. "What are you doing up there, Sarouk?"

Manool beckoned them over to the ventilator.

"Don't talk too loud," he cautioned in a hoarse whisper. "I can't say much. Somebody is guarding outside the door, maybe they hear me. They kill Doc Slade and the chemist. I got a scheme. You take this grating off, while I go back to the farm and get something."

* * * * *

He backed away without waiting for an answer and made his way slowly back to the farm. He picked up one of his boxes of tooth-powder and hoisted it up to the ventilator shaft, shoving it back as far as he could. Then he climbed in after it and began his journey back to the mess-room, pushing the box ahead of him. It was slow work, but he made it at last, and called softly to Tarrant to come and get the box.

"What's this all about, Manool?" demanded the captain, but Manool refused to answer.

"Can't talk too much, Captain," he whispered. "Got to hurry. If someone tries to come in farm before I get these boxes over here, this whole plan be shot. Don't you talk now, please."

Tarrant nodded his understanding and Manool started back for another box of tooth-powder. As he hunched his way along, he heard Tarrant say to Rogers, quite plainly: "Think he knows what he's doing, Ike?"

He smiled bitterly. It seemed impossible for anyone to expect anything important could be accomplished by little Manool Sarouk. Well, if things went right, he was certainly going to show them, this time.

In spite of his haste, and in spite of the fact that Rogers helped him after the third trip, it was some little time before Manool dropped down in the tank-room after that last box. He heaved a huge sigh of relief as he put it into the ventilator shaft, and turned to do the one thing left to do. This was the one job he hated, but it was the most important job of all. He went to his locker and got out a big bottle and poured liquid from it into every one of the tanks. He turned off a valve under each tank and took a hammer and beat the valve-handle into uselessness. Then, after checking to make sure he hadn't overlooked anything, he climbed into the tube and started pushing that last box of tooth-powder ahead of him.

At last he reached the mess-room again and handed down his box. He climbed down, himself, and had no more than landed when Tarrant was on him with a whispered, "Come on now, Manool, tell us what this is all about."

"Just a couple minutes more, Captain," Manool pleaded. "You think they can get through that door?"

"Not a chance," Rogers spoke up.

"That's fine. Maybe, then, you help me fix that ventilator, too." They put the grill back on the ventilator, and covered it by nailing boards from the table over it.

"By-'n'by, we make that air-tight," said Manool, and gave his next order. Yes, he was giving orders to the captain and the navigator now, and he was quite conscious that he was doing so.

"You get all the bowls and pans and pots in here and fill 'em with water. No telling when those fellows decide to cut our water lines."

It took them half an hour to do that, and it wasn't until it was done that Manool felt satisfied. Then he began to break open one of the cartons of tooth-powder, explaining his plans as he did so, in the same whisper he had used all along.

"Those fellows out there got the whole ship to themselves," he said. "They got lots of food and lots of water and lots of air. They got fuel, too, and somebody who can lay an orbit for contact with Ceres. But I don't think they ever get there.

"There's a whole lot of fellows, too," said Manool, dubiously. "I think maybe the air they got won't last 'em."

"Their _air_!" ejaculated Tarrant. "Manool, you haven't monkeyed with the tanks, have you?"

"I just kill the water-weed, that's all."

"Are you nuts, little man?" asked Tarrant at last. "How in thunder are _we_ going to breathe, when this air gets stale. You may smother those pirates, but we're all in the same boat here, you know."

Manool smacked his fist into his hand to emphasize his remark.

"We may be in same boat, but we three, we're in different part of this boat. Maybe them rats outside quit breathing, all right, but not us! Look here."

He seized them both by the shoulder and hauled them across the room. He broke open one of the corrugated boxes as they watched, and pulled out a gaily colored can. He opened the can and dumped the contents into a pan of water, while they looked on.

He stirred the paste in the bottom of the pan for a moment and then let out a cry of triumph.

"Aha! See there! What you think of that, by gum!"

* * * * *

A series of bubbles was rising from the paste, rising and breaking, bringing fragments of the tooth-powder with them, giving the water a cloudy and dusty quality as they grew and joined each other, faster and faster. Manool winked.

"Maybe Manool isn't as big fool as these hoodlums think," he said proudly. "I don't know much, maybe. But, by gum, I know my business. I know about tooth-powders and I know about providing oxygen for rocket ships.

"You know what, Captain. Most tooth-powders got sodium perborate in 'em. They put it in because that perborate give off pure oxygen when you put it in water, and pure oxygen is pretty good antiseptic. Only this time, we're going to use that oxygen to keep us alive instead of killing germs."

He leaned over and took a sniff of the life-giving gas.

"In a day or two," he said, happily, "the air out in the rest of the rocket is going to get pretty stale. Then they try to get in here. We hold 'em out all right, then afterwhile they come, offering to surrender, begging for a breath of fresh air. Ain't it nice to think that there's only enough for the three of us? If we get soft and let 'em breathe any of our air, nobody will reach port alive. So we have to be hard and let that mob of cut-throats smother to death."

He sat down and leaned back and smiled. Manool Sarouk felt pretty good. He felt satisfied with himself for the first time in a long while.