Joel realized that the other prisoners had formed in a row down the walls. He glanced about uncertainly.
"There's a vacant bunk beside mine," Nick Thorp suggested.
Joel gratefully took his place beside Thorp. The bell fell silent. Everyone was staring through the wall into the guardroom.
The guards had abandoned their card game, he saw. They were straightening their uniforms, buttoning their tunics. He could see the passage beyond and two men making their way along it.
One, he recognized, was Doctor Chedwick, white-frocked and moon-faced. The other was a short man with a truculent walk. He was wearing the green uniform of a space man.
A low excited buzz arose from the prisoners. Joel caught words here and there. "Asgard! So soon!"
He felt tight with excitement and glanced surreptitiously at the girl beside him.
She was an exotic elfin creature, even in the shapeless gray coveralls. Her black eyes and hair, the smooth olive of her complexion lent her the appearance of an Arab. He wondered what crime she had committed that had condemned her to the Experimental Station.
Then the door to the guardroom was flung violently open. The captain appeared in the entrance and shouted, "Attention!"