"And how about our pal Brenner-Hughes-Morgan?"
"You leave me out of this!" snapped Morgan.
"Sorry," said Farradyne with a smile. "I didn't mean to include you,
Walter."
Carolyn said in a confident voice, "Brenner is one of us. He is just as
willing to die for our cause as--"
A searchlight swept across the lake and its light, refracted downward
from the waves, caught Farradyne's eye. He left them in the salon
and raced up the stairs to the control room. Through the astrodome,
distorted by the water, Farradyne could see the headlamps of the big
truck. The searchbeam crossed the water again and flashed ever so
briefly on the slender rod of the antenna. The truck paused in its
course, the beam swept the woody shore and stopped; then the truck
turned and rumbled off through the trees.
* * * * *
The radio music died again. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to
bring you a very unusual program. John Bundy, our special events
newscaster, has joined the forces scouring the Lake Superior region
for Charles Farradyne. Inasmuch as an early arrest is expected, and
possibly a running gun battle, John Bundy will now take the air with an
on-the-spot account. Mr. Bundy:
"Hello; this is John Bundy. Our convoy of trucks, men, guns, radar, and
radio control resembles a war convoy. We have everything from trench
knives to one-fifty-five rifles aboard as we scour the Northwoods for
the criminal who has been so successful up to this time. We arrived
at a point along Lake Superior which must be close to the point of
Farradyne's operations, according to the information given us by the
arrested truck driver. Sand and mud from Miss Hannon's shoes correspond
to the district.
"Flying above us now are eight squadron bombers carrying heavy
depth-charges, since Farradyne is believed to be hiding his spacecraft
in the waters of Lake Superior. A submarine from the Great Lakes
Geodetic Survey has been hastily equipped with some ranging sonar
from the War Museum at Chicago and is seeking Farradyne's submerged
spacecraft. It--"
There came a distant crash in the radio and seconds afterwards the
Lancaster resounded with the thunder of an underwater explosion.
"One of the depth-charge patterns has been dropped," explained Bundy
excitedly. "Perhaps this is--no, it is not. Sorry. The submarine has
covered the explosion area and reported only an underwater mountain
peak instead of a hidden spacecraft. Nothing will be left unsearched--"
A thin, pure, ping, of a pitch, so high it was at the upper limit
of Farradyne's hearing, came and lasted for less than a tenth of a
second. It came again in about twenty seconds, and repeated itself in
twenty seconds, and again and again and again. The interval dropped;
the volume of the ping increased noticeably until the singing tinkle,
something like tapping a silver table knife on a fine glass goblet, was
coming fast.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
Farradyne looked above and saw the sky-trails of jet bombers, making
ghostly patterns in the night sky. There came another flash of the
searchbeam against the antenna. Ping! _Get through, wherever you are!_
Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds
later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook
the big ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake
water oozed through the sealing of the astrodome.
The pinging came louder.
Underwater bursts racketed and flashed and hurled their gouts of force
against the Lancaster, coming closer.
The radio was rambling on and on as John Bundy gave the world a
blow-by-blow description of the action.
"--to those people who have stood out against the expenditure of monies
for arms and training, I say they should witness this attack upon an
enemy of society. They are evacuating the area, now. Farradyne is
trapped and unless he surrenders within the next half hour, atomic
weapons will be used. And then we will never learn the thoughts of the
mind that has directed the decay of the moral fiber of our people. We
will never know why a man, given the opportunities that many finer men
have been denied, chose as his life's work--"
Carolyn laughed hysterically and Farradyne went below for a look.
Morgan and Roberts were waiting on either side of the door; they fell
upon him and pinned him to the deck and held him there, and Carolyn
stood above him gloatingly.
The Lancaster shook with the throb of depth-charges.