The Runaway Asteroid

ost an hour later, the men left the meeting room, smiling, joking, and stepping lightly. Their fatigue was gone, their discouragement forgotten.

Lurton Zimbardo was the last to leave. Now that things were moving in the direction he wanted, he allowed his fatigue to take over. Encouraged by the support of his assistants, he felt he could rest at last. He walked down the halls, past various doors and entered an elevator. The display screen offered only the few floors in use by the pirates but Zimbardo had another destination in mind. Alone in the elevator, he punched in a special code which only he knew. When the proper sequence was displayed, he pressed "Enter." As the elevator began to move, the new leader of the pirates relaxed even further. The others would not know where he was, and he would be undisturbed.

He could barely sense the elevator's motion. He didn't know how far into the asteroid's interior he was moving, but he knew what he would find when he reached his destination. The doo