1. Trouble Times Two 2. Jupiter Equilateral 3. Too Many Warnings 4. "Between Mars and Jupiter...." 5. The Black Raider 6. The Last Run of the Scavenger 7. Prisoners 8. The Scavengers of Space 9. The Invisible Man 10. The Trigger 11. The Haunted Ship 12. The Sinister Bonanza 13. Pinpoint in Space 14. The Missing Asteroid 15. The Final Move Greg Hunter. Test pilot—happy only when his life hung in the balance. Tom Hunter. A pioneer—his frontier was hidden in test tubes. Johnny Coombs. A prospector—

The sun was glowing dull red as it slipped down behind the curving horizon of Mars, but Gregory Hunter was not able to see it. There was no viewscreen in the ship's cabin; it was too tiny for that. Greg twisted around in the cockpit that had been built just big enough to hold him, and shifted his long legs against the brace-webbing, trying to get them comfortable. He knew he was afraid ... but nobody else knew that, not even the captain waiting at the control board on the satellite, and in spite

For a moment, Major Briarton just stared at him. Then he was on his feet, shaking his head as he came around the desk. "Tom, use your head," he said. "It's as much of a shock to me as it is to you, but you can't afford to jump to false conclusions...." Tom Hunter looked up bitterly. "He's dead, isn't he?" "Yes, he's dead. He must have died the instant of the explosion...." "You mean you don't know?" "I wasn't there at the time it happened, no." "Then who was?" Major Briarton spread his hands hel

For a moment, neither of the boys could say anything at all. From the time they had learned to talk, they had heard stories and tales that the miners and prospectors told about the Big Strike, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the wonderful, elusive goal of every man who had ever taken a ship into the Asteroid Belt. For almost a hundred and fifty years ... since the earliest days of space exploration ... there had been miners prospecting in the Asteroids. Out there, beyond the orbit of

After all the tension of preparing for it, the trip out seemed interminable. They were all impatient to reach their destination. During blastoff and accelleration they had watched Mars dwindle to a tiny red dot; then time seemed to stop altogether, and there was nothing to do but wait. For the first eight hours of free fall, after the engines had cut out, Tom was violently ill. He fought it desperately, gulping the pills Johnny offered and trying to keep them down. Gradually the waves of nausea

For a stunned moment they were helpless as they struggled to pick themselves up. The stable airlock deck was suddenly no longer stable ... it was lurching back and forth like a rowboat on a heavy sea, and they grabbed the shock-bars along the bulkheads to steady themselves. "What happened?" Greg yelped. "I saw a ship...." As if in answer there was another crash belowdecks, and the lurching became worse. "They're firing on us, that's what happened," Johnny Coombs growled. "Well, they're shaking u

To Greg Hunter the siege of the orbit-ship had been a nerve-wracking game of listening and waiting for something to happen. In the darkness of the control cabin he stretched his fingers, cramped from gripping the heavy Markheim stunner, and checked the corridor outside again. There was no sound in the darkness there, no sign of movement. Somewhere far below he heard metal banging on metal; minutes before he thought he had heard the sharp ripping sound of a stunner blast overhead, but he wasn't s

Wherever they were planning to take them, the captors took great pains to make sure that their two prisoners did not escape before they were underway. Greg and Johnny were strapped down securely into accelleration cots. Two burly guards were assigned to them, and the guards were taking their job seriously. One of the two was watching them at all times, and both men held their stunners on ready. Meanwhile, under Doc's orders, the crew of the Jupiter Equilateral ship began a systematic looting of

The casual observer might have been fooled. Tawney's guard was down only for an instant; then the expression of cold fury and determination on his face dropped away as though the shutter of a camera had clicked, and he was all smiles and affability. They were honored guests here, one would have thought, and this pudgy agent of the Jupiter Equilateral combine was their genial host, anxious for their welfare, eager to do anything he could for their comfort.... They were amazed by the luxuriousness

Crouching back into the shadow, Tom Hunter waited as the heavy footsteps moved up the corridor, then back down, then up and down again. He peered around the corner for a moment, looking quickly up and down the curving corridor. The guard was twenty yards away, moving toward him in a slow measured pace. Tom jerked his head back, then peered out again as the footsteps receded. The guard was a big man, with a heavy-duty stunner resting in the crook of his elbow. He paused, scratched himself, and re

In the first instance of astonishment they were speechless. Later, Tom said it was the first time in his life that he had ever seen Greg totally without words; his brother jumped back, as if he had seen a ghost, and his mouth worked, but no sounds came out. "Don't worry, it's me all right," Tom said, "and I'm mighty hungry." Greg and Johnny stared at the black hole behind the grill ... and then Greg was pumelling him, pounding him on the back, so excited he couldn't get a sentence out, and Johnn

They did not pause, even to catch their breath, for the first twenty minutes as Tom led them swiftly and silently down through the maze of corridors and chutes that made up the ventilation system of the huge ship. Greg lost his bearing completely in the first twenty seconds; each time his brother paused at a junction of tubes, he felt a wave of panic rise up in his throat ... suppose they lost themselves in here! He heard Johnny's trousers flapping behind him, saw Tom's figure flit past another

They were taken to a small, drab internment room. A half hour passed and still no word from the Major. From the moment the Patrol crew had boarded them, everything had seemed like a bad dream. The shock of the arrest, the realization that the Captain had been serious when he reeled off the charges lodged against them ... they had been certain it was some kind of ill-planned joke until they saw the delegation of Jupiter Equilateral officials waiting at the port to greet Merrill Tawney like a man

Tom knew now that it was the right thing to do. There was no question, after the Major's story, of what Dad had been doing out in the Belt at the time he had been killed. He had been doing a job that was more important to him than asteroid mining ... but he had found something more important than his own life, and had no chance to send word of what he had found back to Major Briarton on Mars. That had been the unforeseeable part of the trap. But now, of course, the Major had to know. The Mars Co

It had been a wild twelve hours since Tom Hunter's call to his brother from the Map Room in Sun Lake City. The Major had arrived first, still buttoning his shirt and wiping sleep from his eyes. Johnny and Greg came in on his heels. They had found Tom waiting for them, so excited he could hardly keep his words straight. He told them what he had found, and they wondered why they had not thought of it from the first moment. "We knew there had to be an answer," Tom said, "some place Dad could have u

"I realize I'm much earlier than you expected, Major. You did a very neat job of camouflaging your takeoff ... we were almost fooled ... and no doubt the dummy ship you sent off later got full fanfare. I suppose there will be a dozen Patrol ships converging on this spot in a few hours, expecting to surprise a Jupiter Equilateral ship making a desperate attempt to hijack your little treasure here." The little fat man laughed cheerfully. "Unfortunately for you," he added, "we have many friends on