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There were electric lights blazing in the demi-twilight, to guide freight vehicles with their loads. The tourist-jeeps went and returned and went and returned. The last shipload of travelers from Earth wanted to see the space-craft about which all the world was talking. Even Cochrane presently became curious.
Others of the swiftly-moving landing-parties drove the chosen ground-cars away from the streets. The remaining cars received a blaster-bolt apiece. In seven minutes and thirty seconds from the landing of the small space-craft, a motley assortment of cars roared out of the village, heading for the capital city of Garen. As the last car cleared the houses, there was a monstrous explosion.
So Bors and Gwenlyn and Morgan got a ground-car and were driven to Kandar's commercial spaceport. There they found the Sylva. It was far larger than the usual space-yachts. There were commercial space-craft which were no larger. But it was a workmanlike sort of ship, at that. It had two lifeboat blisters, and there were emergency rockets for landings where no landing-grids existed.
They'd been threatened and oppressed by guardships in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any space-craft they might send aloft. So Calhoun pondered ... A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on a Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises carefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun raised his head. He listened sharply.
The landing-grid locked on, raised the small space-craft until Weald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfully cast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there was not enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive. He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely; "Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"
On she bored through the ether, detector screens full out and greenly scintillant Vorkulian wall-screens outlining her football shape in weird and ghastly light; unafraid now of any possible surviving space-craft of the hexans. But if the hexans detected her, they made no sign.
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