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He was not built for mental strain: his lips kept drying and his tongue was as leather. A little sputtering sound tingled the nerves of the three waiting men, and as one their eyes went to the radio loudspeaker. A contact question was being asked in the usual way: "Are you there, Judd? Are you there, Judd? Are you there, Judd?" The voice was not that of Ku Sui.
"See how it is, Nors-King?" Gunnar said as he drew his fingers across the shaft of his sword. "It is as I told you before. We have the same weapons. The same defenses. I will use the Blood-Drinkers yet, before this is over." There was a demanding buzz from the loudspeaker. Ato turned the dial. A strange, harsh voice was calling. "You there, on the Second ship. You on the second ship. Answer."
The crowd surged against the barrier, but more guards were sent out as reinforcements, until they had cleared a space for the ship and a lane to the hall entrance. "Mars greets the distinguished guests from our sister planet!" boomed the giant loudspeaker in the tower. Immediately afterward came the strains of the song "Terrestria Fair Green Terrestria" in a rushing torrent of sound.
"Merrymaking doesn't scare me," Retief said. "Come to think of it, I don't know what the word means." He started up, Magnan behind him. At the top of the long stair a dense throng milled in the alley-like street. A giant illuminated roulette wheel revolved slowly above them. A loudspeaker blared the chant of the croupiers from the tables inside.
One of the grain-ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its pilot was triumphantly calling for landing-coördinates. The grid office relayed his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to get it on the communication system of the whole planet. "Calling ground," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the student pilots Calhoun had trained. "Calling ground!
But even so, to look at the sun directly might easily result in a retinal sunburn which could result in blindness. The loudspeaker behind Joe's chair clattered. It had seemed muted by the weight of its diaphragm at three gravities. Now it blasted unintelligibly, with no weight at all. Mike threw a switch and took the message.
The speed of its disappearance was not it specifically was not attributable to one earth-gravity of lift applied on a one-sixth-gravity moon. The loudspeaker hiccoughed and was silent. Cochrane uttered the roar he had started before the added acceleration began. But it was useless. Out the side-port, he saw the stars. They were not still and changeless and winking, as they appeared from the moon.
As a consequence, whenever two or three came in together, the reports overlapped, resulting in a jumble of unintelligible sounds from the loudspeaker. "Brf brf brm," it was saying as we entered the room. "Rrr rrr about three hundred meters khorof khorof khorof north by northeast. Can you hear me, FHQ? Come in, FHQ." There was a further muddle of words, then, "I think my motor's going to conk out.
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