Yarr turned back to his switch-board. We had a close-up of a great
round port. The sound mechanism clicked on, running at high speed with
a peculiar _wheetledy-woodeldey-weedledy_ garble of shrill noises.
Suddenly the cruiser shot into view. Yarr slowed everything down to
normal speed.
The fat needle nosed into place, the ports clanged and hissed as the
suction junction was made. Abruptly, the scene shifted and we were
inside the lock between the two ships. Men in stained dungarees,
stripped to the waist and sweating, were hauling heavy canvas-wrapped
equipment into the mother ship. To one side two elderly guys were
talking swiftly:
"You had difficulty?"
"More than ever. Thank God this is the last shipment."
"How about credits?"
"Exhausted."
"Do you mean that?"
"I do."
"I can't understand it. We had over two millions left."
"We lost all that through indirect purchases and--"
"And what?"
"Bribes, if you must know."
"Bribes?"
"My dear sir, you can't order cyclotrons without making people
suspicious. If you so much as mention an atom today, you accuse
yourself."
"Then we all stand accused here and now."
"I'm not denying that."
"What a terrible thing it is that the most precious part of our
existence should be the most hated."
"You speak of--"
"The atom."
The speaker gazed before him meditatively, then sighed and turned into
the shadowy depths of the spaceship.
I said: "All right, that's enough. Cut into the moment just before the
black-out occurs. Take it inside the ship."
The integrators quickened and the sound track began its shrill babble
again. Quick scenes of the interior of the mother ship flickered across
the crystal. A control chamber, roofed with a transparent dome passed
repeatedly before us, with the darting figures of men snapping through
it. At last the Integrator fixed on that chamber and stopped. The
scene was frozen into a still-photograph--a tableau of half a dozen
half-naked men poised over the controls, heads tilted back to look
through the dome.