The next thing he remembered was his friend shaking him. Rock stirred sleepily.
“I guess I’ll be shot for going to sleep on guard duty,” Shep confessed. “I just couldn’t help it, though.”
Rock had no reason to doubt that the Dog Star would not still be in its same spot, but some impulse prompted him to look out the port just the same. His heart suddenly seemed to go dead inside of him.
“The ship is gone, Shep!”
“Oh, no!”
The glasses revealed indisputably that the ship had blasted off. There was only a blackened ring and a depression where the Dog Star had been before.
“They’ve gotten the jump on us again!” Rock said brokenly.
“Kalmus must have threatened the boys, or else Judas got the ship off,” Shep said.
“Whatever it was, they’re gone now,” Rock said hopelessly. “They can be heading for almost any place in the solar system.”
“What do you think we should do now?” Shep asked.