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“Fair enough. But tonight, you stay prisoners. Tomorrow, maybe not,” and he herded them back into the lounge. He cuffed them to the guide rail and so left them, frowning a little. Braker had been too acquiescent
    The reason for that struck Tony hard. Walking back along the corridor, he saw something gleaming on the floor. He froze. Revulsion gripping him, he slowly picked up the ring.
    Masters turned, said sharply, “What’s up?”
    Tony smiled lopsidedly, threw the ring into the air twice, speculatively, catching it in his palm. He extended it to Masters.
    “Want a ring?”
    Masters’ face went white as death. He jumped back.
    “Damn you!” he said violently. “Take that thing away!”
    “Braker slipped it off his finger,” said Tony, his voice edging into the aching silence. Then he turned on his heel, and walked back to the lounge. He caught Braker’s attention.
    He held the ring out.
    “You must have dropped it,” he said.
    Braker’s lips opened in a mirthful, raucous laugh.
    “You can have it, copper,” he gasped. “
I
don’t want to be any damned skeleton!”
    Tony slipped the ring into his pocket and walked back down to the corridor with a reckless swing to his body.
    He knocked on the door to Overland’s room, opened it when Laurette’s voice sounded.
    Masters and Laurette looked at him strangely.
    Overland looked up from the bed.
    “Lieutenant,” he said, an almost ashamed look on his face, “sometimes I wonder about the human mind. Masters seems to think that now
you’ve
got the ring,
you’re
going to be the skeleton.”
    Masters’ nails clicked. “It’s true, isn’t it? The outlaws know about the ring. We know about it. But Crow
has
the ring, and it’s certain none of us is going to take it.”
    Overland made an exasperated clicking sound.
    “It’s infantile,” he snapped. “Masters, you’re acting like a child, not like a scientist. There’s only one certainty, that one of us is going to be the skeleton. But there’s no certainty which one. And there’s even a possibility that all of us will die.” His face clouded angrily. “And the most infantile viewpoint possible seems to be shared by all of you. You’ve grown superstitious about the ring. Now it’s – a ring of death! Death to him who wears the ring!
Pah!
”
    He stretched forth an imperative hand.
    “Give it to me, lieutenant! I’ll tell you right now that no subterfuge in the universe will change the fact of my being a skeleton if I
am
the skeleton; and vice versa.”
    Tony shook his head. “I’ll be keeping it – for a while. And you might as well know that no scientific argument will convince anybody the ring is not a ring of death. For, you see, it is.”
    Overland sank back, lips pursed. “What are you going to do with it?” he charged. When Tony didn’t answer, he said pettishly, “Oh, what’s the use! On the face of it, the whole situation’s impossible.” Then his face lighted. “What did you find out?”
     
    Tony briefly sketched his conclusions. It would be two or three weeks before they could repair the rocket jets, get the electric transmission system working properly.
    Overland nodded absently. “Strange, isn’t it!” he mused. “All that work DeTosque, Bodley, Morrell, Haley, the Farr brothers and myself have done goes for nothing. Our being here proves the theory they were working on.”
    Laurette smiled lopsidedly at Tony.
    “Lieutenant,” she said, “maybe the skeleton was a woman.”
    “A woman!” Masters’ head snapped around, horror on his face. “Not you, Laurette!”
    “Why not? Women have skeletons, too – or didn’t you know?” She kept her eyes on Tony. “Well, lieutenant? I put a question up to you.”
    Tony kept his face impassive. “The skeleton,” he said, without a tremor, “was that of a man.”
    “Then,” said Laurette Overland, stretching out her palm, cupshaped, “give me the ring.”
    Tony froze, staring. That his lie should have this