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It occurred to him that it would neither be wise nor creditable to say that he'd been sent here to split up a target at which saboteurs might shoot. "I guess I'm attached for rations," he observed. "There'll be orders along about me presently, I suppose. Then I'll know what it's all about." He fell to on his breakfast. The thunderous noises of the pushpots taking off made the mess hall quiver.
Mike says he has the real answer to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel! Listen!" Joe dropped to the ground. "Shoot it," he said. He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to murder Sally and himself. Joe's jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim ideas that came into his mind.
Mike would play the game. "No. We would refuse such an ultimatum. They would aim at us. Can you prevent that?" Mike thought hard. He'd better come up with an answer to that one, saboteurs or no. "If they shot through the hub, they'd hit our shielding water and explode the hub-hull. That would wreck the wheel, and they'd need the wheel.
We caught the saboteurs at the pushpot field by guessing at a new sort of thinking for sabotage. Here's a chance to catch the saboteurs who'll work their heads off in the next twenty-four hours or so, by using a new sort of thinking for security!" Major Holt was not an easy man to get along with at any time, and this was the worst of all times to differ with him. But he did think straight.
Meanwhile your ah work crew will start to repair the one that is here." "Yes, sir." "And," said the Major, "I am sending you to the pushpot airfield. I intend to scatter the targets the saboteurs might aim at. You are one of them. Your crew is another. From time to time you will confer with them and verify their work. If any of them should be disposed of, you will be able to instruct others."
"What's going on here?" said one, who was wearing a sergeant's stripes. The jeep had the words BEACH PATROL stenciled on it in white paint. "We just nailed these two Brungarian frogmen," Bud explained. "A sub put them ashore probably as spies or saboteurs. They won't talk to us, but maybe you can pump them at headquarters." The startled sergeant turned a cold eye on the two prisoners.
It might not be the saboteur, he thought, but the chances looked grimly real that Earth was right that the whole thing was sabotage, and those were the seven saboteurs. While he waited, he checked the Security quarters for Elbertson. The major was not there, nor was he in the hospital. Elbertson, he thought. I've been blind.
Then Mike heard Ishie's soft voice from behind him, slightly breathless. "At that, you'd better swing the rim and swing her fast, Mike. The captain sure 'nuff believes in his saboteurs, and it's just possible they're real." O.K., thought Mike, and really moving now he reached the engineering quarters a good ten strides ahead of his companion.
Smoke bombs and explosions in the outgoing screening rooms had created real panic, and but for Joe's order for his group's walkie-talkies to be turned off would have drawn every security man on duty to that spot. Mike's trick, then, had brought some saboteurs into the open, but had merely happened to coincide with the most dangerous and well-organized coup of all.
The tone of the captain's voice told Mike he'd better darned well believe in those saboteurs or tell the captain the truth and that quickly. "Now, assuming Hot Rod can be activated, we will also assume that their first aim will be to control the wheel. They would, therefore, aim at the hub and issue an ultimatum." "They might aim at a target on Earth, and issue an ultimatum to us."
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