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So I doubled back, and located what is left of Rodan's camp, and yours and Les' initialed blastoff drums, which I've brought along in my trailer. Lucky a trader needs an atom-powered tractor that can move at night. I followed your tracks, though going through rough country, you were screened from my radio calls until I was almost on you.
This was all surmise-prediction, of course, but his extreme precautions, already taken, did not look good. On the Moon there could easily be an arranged accident, killing Lester, and him Frank Nelsen and maybe even Dutch. Rodan's pupils had that nervous way of expanding and contracting rapidly, too. Nelsen figured that he might be reading the signs somewhat warpedly himself. Still...?
"Good for you, Les," Nelsen enthused, relieved. "Only well, skip it, for now." Two work periods later, he approached Rodan. "It will take months to sift all this dust," he said. "I may not want to stay that long." The pupils of Rodan's eyes flickered again. "Oh?" he said. "Per contract, you can quit anytime. But I provide no transportation.
Frank Nelsen untied Rodan's and Dutch's feet, and, at pistol point, ordered them to move out ahead. From the charts he knew the bearing straight toward the constellation Cassiopeia, at this hour, across an arm of Mare Nova, then along a pass that cut through the mountains. Eight hundred hopeless miles...! Well, how did he know, really? How much could a human body take? How fast could they go?
Frank Nelsen became more aware of the heavy automatic pistol at Rodan's hip, and felt a tingling urge to get away from here and from this man as if a vast mistake had been made. "It is necessary for you to be informed about some matters," Rodan said slowly.
Frank and Jennie sat at a table in a private booth, high up in the arches of The First Stop, and watched Eileen do another number. Jennie explained herself. "I'm another one. I've got to go where the heroes go. That's me Frankie, is it? So I'm here..." She had a perfume. While he was Rodan's prisoner for two and a half months, there were special things that had driven him almost wild.
The adjacent garden and quarters domes were also shredded and swept away. Dazed, Nelsen still got Rodan's automatic, picked himself up, saw that Dutch and Rodan, in armor, too, had apparently suffered from the explosion no worse than had he. He glanced at the hole in the lava rock, still smoking in the high vacuum. Most of the force of the blast had gone upward.
And an old buddy of ours is waiting for us at a repair and outfitting shop near the space port. I hope we didn't jump the gun, assuming you want to get out into the open again, too?" "You didn't," Nelsen answered. "You sure you don't want to look at Rodan's site see if we can find any more Martian stuff?" Gimp looked regretful for a second. "Uh-uh it's jinxed," he said.
Frank's interest, here, however, palled quickly. And Lester, in his mumbling, studious preoccupation, was no companionable antidote for loneliness. Frank tried a new approach on Helen, who really was Rodan's daughter. "Do you like poetry, Helen? I used to memorize Keats, Frost, Shakespeare." They were there in the dining room. She brightened a little. "I remember some."
In the airtight cabin of Xavier Rodan's vehicle, Frank Nelsen and David Lester had read and signed their contracts and had received their copies. Rodan didn't smile. "Now we'll go down and have a look at the place I'm investigating," he said.
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