"You will be compensated for this," he said hurriedly. "You can have your steward back on the job again. How long do you stay here?"
"Three hours, curse the luck. We usually touch and go, but this time I have an ethergram ordering me to wait here for a special passenger. Why in hell can't these hicks in the gravel belt learn to catch a ship on time?"
"Ah," breathed Neville. "That makes a difference. I think I'll stay with you. Have you a vacant room where I can hang out for the remainder of the voyage?"
"Yes."
Neville did another lightning change—back to Special Investigator Billy Neville of the I.P.—uniform and all. He was standing near the spacelock when the expected passenger came aboard.
Neville could not suppress a murmur of approval as he saw his quarry approaching. As an artist in his own right, he appreciated artistry when he saw it. The man coming down the field was Carstairs, but what a different Carstairs! He was more slender, he had altogether different clothes on, he had a different gait. His complexion was not the same. But the height was the same, and the bags he carried were the same shape and size, except for their gray canvas coverings. There was a little notch in the right ear that he had not troubled to rectify in the brief time he had had for his transformation in what was undoubtedly his pre-arranged hideaway on Vesta.
"What is the next stop, skipper?" Neville whispered to the captain.
"New York."
"I'll stay out of sight until then."
Any passenger on that voyage of the Fanfare will tell you that her captain should have been retired years before. He made three bad tries before he succeeded in lowering his ship into the dock at the skyport. The passengers did not know, of course, that he had to stall to permit a certain member of the I.P. to make a parachute landing from the stratosphere.