His speculations were interrupted by the sudden bursting open of the cabin door. An officer, spruce in gray uniform and silver braid, entered hurriedly, his face flushed with excitement.
"Captain Dunstan, the most extraordinary thing has happened! We've just picked up two men—two men drifting with the meteoric stream, and in space suits—and they're alive!"
Captain Dunstan rose slowly. "Alive, and adrift in space? Then it's the first such occurrence in the history of space travel! Who are they?"
"I don't know, sir. So far we've got only one out of his suit. But I have reason to believe they're the men recently reported as missing by the E.M.T. Lines. He babbled something about Echo—that there's hell to pay on Echo. I imagine he means Asteroid No. 60. But—"
"Lead the way," said the captain, stepping quickly toward the doorway. "There's something mighty queer going on."
And so, by a lucky break, Neal Bormon found himself snatched from death and aboard the Alert, arriving there by a route as hazardous and strange as was ever experienced by spaceman.
And no less strange and unexpected came the knowledge of Keith Calbur's arrival there ahead of him.
Bormon, who was last to be drawn in by the grapple-ray and helped out of his space suit by the willing hands of the Alert's crew, was still capable of giving an understandable account of things; although Calbur, until the effects of the Martian drug wore off, would be likely to remain in his somewhat neurotic condition of bewilderment.
"These Marts," said Bormon, after a great deal of explaining on both sides, "don't know that you have discovered their stream of ore. They won't know it until their communications have been repaired."