"It goes straight down, and there's no ladder," came the reply. It was Bayliss Kent's voice. "I don't see him down there."
"What kind of tube is this?" the first voice asked. Hal Lester, Kent's chief henchman.
"Irrigation, I think."
"Well, if he has managed to get down it, he's gotten clean away. Bayliss, I told you we shouldn't have let Conroy know our plans."
"Never mind that now!" Kent snapped coldly. "Search the cornfield! He must be here somewhere—and we've got to find him before the local agronomist comes by on his inspection rounds."
There was the sound of the door being lowered, and darkness came again. Peter Conroy heaved a sigh of relief and continued working his way down the tube.
He knew these tubes well. His father was an Agronomist, and, until Peter had taken up navigation, he had helped his father on the farmlands. The ship was like a sealed world, a hollow metal planet five miles in diameter that was carrying its crew through space on the generations-long voyage to Procyon.
Or would the starship ever get to Procyon? Was Bayliss Kent going to succeed in his plan to force the Commander to reverse the ship and return to Earth?
Not if they depended on Peter Conroy to navigate for them, they wouldn't!