SABOTAGE IN SPACE




CHAPTER 1


"_Bong-g-g! Bong-g-g! Bong-g-g!--_"

With a hollow booming sound reminiscent of old eighteenth-and
nineteenth-century clock towers, the electronic time tone rang out from
the Tower of Galileo, chiming the hour of nine. As the notes
reverberated over the vast expanse of Space Academy, U.S.A., the lights
in the windows of the cadet dormitories began to wink out and the
slidewalks that crisscrossed the campus, connecting the various
buildings, rumbled to a halt. When the last mournful note had rolled
away to die in the distant hills, the school was dark and still. The
only movement to be seen was the slow pacing of the cadet watch
officers, patrolling their beats; the only sound, the measured clicking
of their boots on the metal strips of the slidewalks.

On the north side of the quadrangle near the Tower, a young watch
officer paused in front of one of the dormitories and scanned the
darkened windows of the durasteel and crystal building. Satisfied that
all was in order, he continued on his lonely way. A moment later a
shadowy figure rose out of the bushes opposite the dormitory entrance
and stepped forward quickly and cautiously. Pausing on the slidewalk to