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Updated: June 15, 2025
Preston continued, "The thing that's clear to us is that there isn't just an Earthman. There's a gang. Someone sabotages the rockets. Someone else steals the stuff from the warehouse. Someone else and it looks like Mac and Pancho takes the stuff to Careless Mesa, or Steamboat, or both. And someone else the gang that captured you gets it at Steamboat and takes it to Vegas.
All of them had built part of themselves into Pegasus. If it worked . . . Of course it would work! He sought reassurance from Gee-Gee. "It's going to be okay, isn't it?" "Yes." Gee-Gee had no doubt. "Every piece of it has been checked and double-checked. Even the inner workings of the critical parts have been run and rerun. This is one rocket the Earthman never had a chance to sabotage."
They came first to a moss door, then to a wooden door, and lastly to a door of shining metal, whence a staircase went down into the earth, and led them into a large and splendid chamber where the Earthwife lay. When the object of their visit was accomplished the Earthman thanked the woman much, and said: "You do not relish our meat and drink, wherefore I will bestow something else upon thee."
"I think, Earthman, that you are tired, and should rest, lest you make a tired thought and do great harm," suggested Zezdon Afthen. "I want to finish it!" replied Arcot, sharply. He was tired. In seconds the Thought was once more over that fortified station in the mountains and the triple-ray reached out and suddenly, about the ship, was a wall of absolute, utter blackness.
He was thinking more clearly now. He poked the loose wire around, careless of possible shorts, and his luck held. A dozen times the bare wire tip brushed within a tiny space of terminals that would have shorted out the whole control. He found the terminal. The wire had been soldered into place. The Earthman must have used a pair of needle-nose pliers to reach in and jerk it loose.
After he had gone the woman's husband remonstrated with her, bidding her keep the coals, for the Earthman appeared in earnest with his gift. When they reached home, however, she shook out her apron on the hearth, and behold! instead of coals, glittering true gold pieces. The woman now sought eagerly enough after the coals she had thrown away, but she found them not.
There was no evidence of sabotage that he could see, so the open hatchway was nothing but the kind of mistake people make when working under extreme pressure. Again he wondered about the identity of the Earthman. It was curious that no evidence of sabotage had been found in Orion, even though the theft of servomotors had taken place. Maybe, as Dr.
Rick asked the obvious question. "Was it the Earthman?" And Scotty made the obvious answer. "I didn't have a chance to ask him. Anyway, he didn't wear armor." Rick had been keeping his eye on the road ahead. "Pull over," he said quickly. "Let's get out and be looking at cactus or something. I think Mac and Pancho are coming." Scotty complied quickly and shut off the jeep engine.
This time he got the number. "Security? Is this security? Get over here, quick! Warehouse Eight. Hurry! The Earthman has been here!" Rick stared, popeyed. The Earthman! He asked quickly, "What happened?" The clerk swallowed hard. Obviously he was scared stiff. "They were empty," he said. "All of them. Empty! Honest! And in one I found this." He handed Rick the scrap of paper he carried.
"I'm in vehicle maintenance and Rick is in Pegasus electronics." "So? It is an exciting place in which to work. Even I, a fireman, feel this excitement. Tell me, do you think this hombre de terra, this Earthman, was the cause of the tragedy this morning? I call it a tragedy, because it was so. So much work, so much love went into that rocket! Sangre de Cristo! It was a terrible thing."
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