Skagarach said, "They're here!" so sharply that it startled all of
us, even Cuff. He continued more quietly. "They've brought down two
of the rockets and the third will be here soon." He went on, and the
other Old Companions crowded around him, listening eagerly as he told
of the battles as the news was telepathed to him. I looked quickly for
my guard, Trutch. He was turned with his back to me. I moved swiftly
across to where Howard stood talking to Nessa. They saw me coming and
their faces hardened. I started talking in a monotone, pitching my
voice to reach them alone.
"Do you two still think I'm pulling a quisling?" I drew my automatic
and handed it to Howard. "Put that away, quick. Now listen. We're going
to whip these cave bastards. Don't ask questions, just answer, and make
it fast. How do you run the air blower pump up to full capacity?"
Howard looked puzzled but not quite so uncertain of me. He gave me
brief explicit instructions.
"And what would the effect be?" I asked.
"About a hundred-and-twenty-mile gale through the whole ship," he
answered. As he talked I was handing him the extra clips for my gun
and he was stowing them in his pockets. Even Nessa looked hopeful now.
I flicked a glance every second or two at the huddling Neanderthals.
There were a dozen of them here; the others were stationed throughout
the satellite.
"Now," I said, "what would make this metal moon vibrate?"
"Vibrate? Nothing--wait. If you extended the solar mirrors, it wouldn't
exactly vibrate, but it would move. The mirrors are under the hub, and
extending them while we're on the ground would lift the wheel gradually
up, likely tilt it, unless the mirror system broke under all this
weight."
"Can you extend them?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Check your watch. 1:36 a.m. In ten minutes, you will have eluded
these apes and you'll start the mirror mechanism. Take Nessa if you
possibly can. When you've done it, come a-blasting."
"What?"
"Start gunning the apes."
Then Skagarach called to me, and I went over to him. "My brother's
mad," I said. "I mean he's angry about this."
"What carrier of the dark blood wouldn't be?" said Skagarach loftily.
I said, "I think he'll come around to us eventually."
Trutch had come to my side again, frowning angrily at me. Skagarach
said, "Let him alone, you fool, he's all right. Go watch his brother."
And Trutch hulked over to Howard and Nessa.
I turned to Bill Cuff, "How soon do we take off?"
"As fast as the other musters can couple the rockets to the station,"
he said. "Shouldn't be too long. Why?"
"I was thinking maybe we could watch them at it."
"How?"
"On the viewplates back there," I said, jerking a thumb over my
shoulder. "At least two or three of us could watch." The wheel had been
closed and sealed by the air locks, but by opening the small view ports
we would be able to see all around us, while we sat before screens that
transferred the ports' vistas to us in the cabin.
Skagarach said, "Come with us," and he and Bill Cuff strode off. I kept
pace with them, hoping the rest of the job would be as easy as this.
We passed through two sections of the wheel and entered the viewing
room and took seats before the scanners. Bill fiddled with the dials
as I cast a look at the next door, some dozen feet from where I sat.
Just beyond it was the air blower pump. I checked the time. I had six
minutes.
* * * * *
The screens flashed to life. We saw the field around us, and two
gigantic rockets, silver with thick blue bands dividing each into three
sections, the three-stagers that would shortly hurtle us out beyond the
atmosphere. Skagarach began working with the control panel too. At last
we had a complete view of all sides of the wheel.
Many Old Companions, from the musters which had captured the rockets
and brought them here by VTO tug, were hurrying from wheel-side to
rocket, working under the orders of their experts to attach all
components together. This was a purely mechanical job, but I doubted
that it would be done quite so quickly as my comrades seemed to
believe. I saw at least two fumbling attempts to clamp a single
connection that failed miserably. Skagarach scowled and Cuff told him
to telepath Milo to get down to business. They both breathed heavily
through their nostrils.
Then I started to needle them.
It was a hell of a job, doing it without making them enraged with _me_.
First I would ask Skagarach's opinion on something, then Cuff would
sneer at it, and I would give Cuff a gentle push toward anger. It was
like taking two wildcats, one in each hand, and teasing them so that
they'd fly at each other's throats--ignoring the man who was actually
baiting them. Sweat sprang out on my face and my hands were moist.
What did it was an inspired reference to telepathy. That was Cuff's
sore spot. He turned to Skagarach, eyes narrowed, big hands working
malevolently, and I looked at my watch and saw I had six seconds to go;
I said, "But isn't telepathy the major need of a first leader?" with
innocence dripping from my voice, and Skagarach laughed harshly and
said a sane being would presume it was, and then Bill Cuff leaned over
and hit him in the mouth.
Skagarach recoiled, spat, and then lashed back with a fist that, if
smaller than Cuff's, was still larger than anything you'd care to have
sock you in the nose. Then they were growling like dogs and trying to
strangle one another.
I didn't count on this for a finish fight; I knew it must have happened
often enough before, the meeting of these two brutal creatures; and
I thought they were at bottom too dependent on each other, Cuff for
Skagarach's telepathic powers and the yellow-hair for my cousin's
primordial power, ever to actually fight to the death. But this was all
I'd gambled for, this infuriated scuffle.
I leaned across the great board of instruments. The revolver I'd been
given was in my hand, reversed. I struck the master switch twice, hard,
with the butt of the gun. The second blow knocked it out of alignment
and the screens went blank.
At that instant the space station shuddered, like a live thing
beginning to arouse from sleep, and the floor vibrated a little
beneath my feet. Howard had reached the switch of the solar mirrors,
and gradually they were pushing out from the underside, pressing the
ground, raising the wheel into the air. I wondered how long it would
take them to reach their full extent or to break off. I prayed it would
be a few minutes at least....
At the first sensation of movement, the titans had frozen, Skagarach in
the act of drawing back a fist, Cuff with his hands twined in the long
oily hair of the fox-faced Neanderthal. In a split second they were on
their feet and leaning over the control panels.
"The viewers are dark!" yelled Skagarach.
"We've taken off!" I shouted in the same instant.
"They couldn't." That was Bill Cuff, jiggling a useless lever
furiously. "Unless you ordered them too, you damn--"
"I did no such thing!" screeched Skagarach. If the viewers had been on,
they would have seen that we were still on the ground. If Howard hadn't
started the mirrors out, they'd have discovered my sabotage on the
screens. The gamble had thus far panned out. Now I had to make the last
try. I shoved open the door at my elbow, dashed into the chamber which
held the air blower pump. Yelling wildly, "_What'll we do now?_" _I_
followed Howard's instructions for bringing the blower to full power.
Then I leaped into the other room again.
They were so demoralized that I might have shot them both in that
moment. Something held me from it. I think it was their inhuman
strength, the knowledge that these two were the highest product of a
race that was not human. Despite the dark blood I knew ran in my body
too, I could not feel that I was Neanderthal; and I could not tackle
the two toughest Neanderthals at the outset of the private war I had
begun. I was--well, I must face it, I was _scared_.
As the blower vents started to pour a hurricane of air into the
chambers of the great wheel, I leaped past them, flicked on the
intercom switch, and bellowed, "Hit the bunks! Lie down and strap
yourselves in! _Fast!_"
Skagarach had time for one approving look in my direction. "Good
Companion!" he said. "You will do!" Then the three of us broke for the
next room and the bunks.