The small metal room, with its grid floor and low arched ceiling,
glared with moonlight through its window. The moving figures of Snap
and Miko were aped by the grotesque, misshapen shadows of them on the
walls. Miko gigantic--a great menacing ogre. Snap small and alert--a
trim, pale figure in his tight-fitting white trousers, broad-flowing
belt, and white shirt open at the throat. His face was pale and drawn
from lack of sleep and the torture to which Miko had subjected him
earlier on the voyage. But he grinned at the brigand's words, and
pushed his straggling hair closer under the red eyeshade.
The room over long periods was deadly silent, with Miko and Snap
bending watchfully at the crowded banks of instruments. A silence in
which my own pounding heart seemed to echo. I did not dare look at
Anita, nor she at me. Snap was trying to signal Earth, not the Moon!
His main grids were set in the reverse. The infra-red waves, flung
from the bow window, were of a frequency which Snap and I believed
that Grantline could not pick up. And over against the wall, close
beside me and seemingly ignored by Snap, there was a tiny ultra-violet
sender. Its faint hum and the quivering of its mirrors had so far
passed unnoticed.
Would some Earth station pick it up? I prayed so. There was a
thumbnail mirror here which would bring an answer.
Would some Earth telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The
pinpoint of the _Planetara's_ infinitesimal bulk would be beyond
vision.
Long silences, broken only by the faint hiss and murmur of Snap's
instruments.
"Shall I try the graphs, Miko?"
"Yes."
I helped him with the spectro. At every level the plates showed us
nothing save the scarred and pitted Moon surface. We worked for an
hour. There was nothing. Bleak cold night on the Moon here beneath us.
A touch of fading sunlight upon the Apennines. Up near the South Pole,
Tycho with its radiating open rills stood like a grim dark maw.