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Updated: June 11, 2025
I crouched tense, breathless; every moment it seemed that the brigands must discover us and loose their bolts. They may have seen us for some moments before they fired. I peered over the side shield down at our mark, then up ahead to get Grantline's firing signal. It seemed long delayed. An added glow down there must have warned Grantline that a shot was coming from there.
As I stood at the window watching the incoming ship, Grantline's voice sounded: "Call in those men! Ring the call-lights, Franck!" The siren buzzed over the camp's interior; the warning call-lights on the roof brought in the outer guards. They came running to the admission ports, which had been repaired after Miko disabled them. The guards came in. We dimmed our lights further.
We could see the ship plainly above us now, a gray-black shape among the stars up beyond the shaggy, towering crater rim. The vessel came upon a level keel, hull down. Slowly circling, looking for Miko's signal, no doubt, or for possible lights from Grantline's camp. They might also be picking a landing place.
Viewed from above there was the darkly purple crater floor, the upflung circular rim where the Earthlight tinged the spires and crags with yellow sheen; and on the shelf, like a huddled group of birds' nests, Grantline's domes hung and gazed down upon the inner valley.
We have no right, even now, to be flying this vessel as unguarded as it is." He was very solemn. And he was grim when I told him of the invisible eavesdropper. "You think he overheard Grantline's message? Who was it? You seem to feel it was George Prince?" I told him I was convinced the prowler went into A20.
With what was undoubtedly an intensified receiving equipment which Snap had not thought Grantline able to use, he had caught our faint zed-rays, which Snap was sending only to deceive Miko. And Grantline had recognized the Planetara, and had released his occulting screens surrounding the ore. And upon their heels came Grantline's message.
I told her everything. "Oh Gregg! The Martian ship coming!" Her mind clung to that as the most important thing. But not so myself. To me there was only the realization that Anita was caught out here, almost at the mercy of Miko's ray. Grantline's men could not get out to help us, nor could I get Anita into the camp. She added, "Where do you suppose the ship is?"
With the mining work over, an irritability grew upon Grantline's men. And perhaps since the human mind is so wonderful, elusive a thing, there lay upon these men an indefinable sense of disaster. Johnny Grantline felt it. He thought about it now as he sat in the room corner watching Wilks being forced into the plaget game, and he found the premonition strong within him.
Grantline clicked the receiver. The room fell into silence. Any call was unusual nothing ever happened here in the camp. The duty man's voice sounded over the room. "Signals coming! Not clear. Will you come over, Commander?" Signals! It was never Grantline's way to enforce needless discipline. He offered no objection when every man in the camp rushed through the connecting passages.
And surprisingly, in the midst of the camp's turmoil of last minute activities, I slept soundly until Snap called me, telling me the ship was coming. The corridor echoed with the tramp of Grantline's busy crew. But there was no confusion; a grim calmness had settled on everyone. Anita and Venza rushed up to join us. "It's in sight!" There was no need of going to the instrument room.
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