"He's coming right over."
"I've coffee brewing. It hasn't landed yet?"
"Not yet, but we're expecting it any minute."
"We'll have time for coffee."
"We'll _take_ time for coffee," said Ralph. "Roberts will do a better
job for a bit of stimulant and something warm."
Jenna yawned and laughed at herself. Ralph turned as blue streamers
cast flickerings on the walls. Outside in the dark, ships of Terra's
fleet were taking off, trailing their flares into the twinkling sky
above them. They were getting out of range of the robomb blast;
clearing the vast Mojave Spaceport. The marker lights winked off as
the last ship left the port, and the sudden roar of the skytrain
crescendoed and then died as the personnel of Mojave left in haste.
Only the decontamination ship remained on the port.
Seconds later, a pale actinic glow suffused the area. The walls of the
buildings glowed with it as the wall shields hugged the buildings
and anchored them to the solid crust of the planet. In the ship a
counting-rate meter climbed up the scale and a radiation identifier
winked, indicating that it was very hard gamma that triggered the
counter. The internal meter showed no danger inside of the ship; it was
far enough from the nearest building on the port.
* * * * *
The door opened again and Jim Roberts walked in. "Give it to me," he
said crisply, nodding cheerfully at Jenna.
Ralph's wife nodded back and then left to get the coffee. When she
returned, Ralph had explained to Captain Roberts fully.
"The devil," muttered Roberts. "Looks rough."
"We've been expecting the high-speed stuff, though," said Jenna,
pouring coffee into three cups.
Lindsay opened his mouth to speak. "You've--" he started, but he was
interrupted by a ground-shaking rumble. Out of the dark California sky
a juggernaut fell, its braking blast lighting up the area. The shrill
of its passage came then, a lowering shrill that started up in the
ear-splitting register and running down the scale like a dying siren
until it was lost in a moan. The earth shook again as the monster hit
the sands of the desert. It sent them high in a mighty impact crater,
plowed its short furrow, and then at the bottom of its inverted cone it
nuzzled into the ground and--started to tick.
Lindsay's jaw closed and he continued: "--been predicting it for a long
time, Jenna." Then he laughed shortly and with just a bit of mirth. "I
won't even let a Martian robomb interfere with what I intend to say."
He became serious again. "No, Jenna, I think you're the only one who
has been insisting that there will be a high-speed job coming along."
Roberts nodded. "The boys at the driver labs claimed it couldn't be
done."
Jenna smiled. It was an elfin smile that brought out the unearthly
beauty of the woman. "That's because I'm Martian," she said simply. "I
know how their minds work."
"That you do," assented Roberts, sipping his coffee. "No one but a
Martian could have unpacked the Gooney."
Lindsay's face paled slightly. Reference to the first and only fuse
that Jenna had ever dissected brought goose pimples to him. Up to that
particular time, the Martians had never included killing charges in the
fuses themselves. Once the thing was out of the robomb, the fuse could
not harm any one. But this diabolical jigsaw puzzle was different. And
Jenna had handed the three pellets to Ralph and then fled. Lindsay
followed her drawings, and they all knew that no one but a Martian
could ever have been able to follow the mechanical labyrinth of that
fuse in safety. Yet they all knew that she'd been safe where not one of
them would have been, for if she'd not asked, amusedly, for permission,
the Gooney would have taken them, one by one. The Gooney had been
dissected and the robomb it came with had been fitted with a Terran
fuse and shipped back. All hoped it would give Mars as much worry as it
had caused Terra.
* * * * *
"I've tried detonating it, and naturally, no dice," said Roberts.
"Better defuse it, then. You've hit it with everything?"
"Everything but another atomic."
"That's asking too much," said Lindsay. "They're packed to the limit
with atomics now, and doubling the power--_brrrrr_."
"Well," said Roberts with a slight smile, "my gear is in the battle
buggy. Outside."
"O.K.," said Lindsay. "We'll move back to a clearer area and set the
recorders going. It's cold, for Haynes' outfit didn't so much as heat
it on the way in. High-speed job for fair, and probably loaded with
mercurite."
* * * * *
The ship sat down again far enough from the buildings so that the green
actinic light from the force fields did not rise to dangerous levels.
The pale glow gave enough light to make the television cameras usable
without any other artificial means, though the shapeless blob that was
the battle buggy and Jim Roberts was hard to keep from losing with the
unaided eye.
Roberts' voice came over the communicator. "O.K.? I'm about to go after
that devil."
"Go ahead, Jim," said Lindsay. A few beads of sweat popped out on his
forehead.