He was climbing into his clothes in a mental hangover of dreams.
"Six. It'd be daylight back home. That mechanic, Pauchek, is dead.
Knife in his throat. Peterson's gone. So's Gates."
Now Bonwitt was thoroughly awake. "So!" he grunted, tying his last
lace. "We go hunting."
"Right." Crane looked out at the bleak lunar landscape through
Bonwitt's dome. Earthlit, that landscape. Cold. Airless.
Bonwitt shivered, looking over at Peterson's dome across the long
transverse passage of the workings. "Where the hell are they?" he asked.
Crane said suddenly: "Look, Chief. See what I see? Two shadows out by
the crater wall? Moving."
"I do--so help me! Space-suits, both of them. What--?"
The earthlight on Luna, thirteen times that of moonlight on the earth,
showed up the men clearly. One was carrying a tripod. This he set up in
a moment, swung a tube on its tip skyward--earthward. The tube began
spouting vivid white flame in spurts.
"Code!" shouted Crane. "Continental. But in those five-letter
combinations. They're signalling eastern Asia!"
"Come on," husked Bonwitt. "We're going to search Peterson's hangout."
They scudded to the other dome.
* * * * *
Crane stood guard while Bonwitt searched with a flash. Outside, the
signalling continued interminably. The engineer found nothing.
"They're starting back," Crane warned.
But they weren't heading here; those space-suited figures sped in the
direction of the air-locked hangars of the small lunar ships.
"After them!" gritted Bonwitt. "This is the pay-off."
He and Crane whirlwinded through refinery and undersurface tubes to the
hangar. Got there just as the inner seal was opening. They crouched in
the shadow of a local ship. A space-suited figure parked the signalling
instrument and yanked off its flexglass helmet. Gates, Peterson, too,
removed his helmet.
"Now for the other side," rasped the super, diving toward one of the
smooth-hulled local ships. "This the one?"
"Yes. She's all set."
"Good." Peterson climbed through the entrance port.
Both men were inside and the port closed behind them.
"Come on, Crane," whispered the engineer.
They took the ship that had hidden them in its shadows. Bonwitt knew
these little skimmers. Their control was simple, their gravity
propulsion just the ticket here where the down-pull was only a sixth of
Terra's.
"Damn!" growled Bill. "They've five minutes' start. We have to wait
till they're through the lock."