We went to the turret. Moa watched me and Snap, a grim, cold Amazon.
She avoided looking at Anita, whom Miko helped down the ladders with
a strange mixture of courtierlike grace and amused irony. Coniston
stared at Anita.
"I say, not George Prince? The girl--"
"No time for explanations," Miko commanded. "It's the girl,
masquerading as her brother. Get below, Coniston. Haljan takes us
down."
The astounded Englishman continued to gaze at Anita. But he said, "I
mean to say, where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once,
Miko? Our equipment is not ready."
"Of course not. We will land well away--"
The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still
holding Anita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will
watch him, Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."
I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answer
should have come from below within a second or two. But it did not.
Miko regarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.
"Ring again, Haljan."