“Easier still to express what you want to remember as a topological relation,” Amalfi grunted. “Show Miramon where the signals came from.”
“Up here, on this wing of the butterfly.”
Miramon frowned. “That can only be Fabr-Suithe. A very bad place to approach, even in the military sense. However, we shall have to try. Do you know what the end result will be?”
“No; what?”
“The bandit cities will come out in force to hinder the Great Work. They do not fear you now—they fear nothing, we think they take drugs—but they have seen no reason to risk probable huge losses by attacking you. When you attack one of them, they will have that reason; they learn hatred very quickly.”
Amalfi shrugged. “We’ll chance it. We’ll pick our own town up and go calling; if they don’t want to deliver up these Okies—”
“Boss—”
“Eh?”
“How are you going to get us off the ground?”
Amalfi could feel his ears turning red, and swore. “I forgot that Twenty-third Street machine. And we can’t get anything suitable into a Hevian rocket—a pile would fit easily enough, but a frictionator or a dismounted spindizzy wouldn’t, and there’d be no point in taking popguns—Maybe we could gas them.”
“Excuse me,” Miramon said, “but it is not certain that the priests will authorize the use of the rockets. We had best drive over to the temple directly and ask.”
“Belsen and bebop!” Amalfi said. It was the oldest oath in his repertoire.
TALK, even with electrical aid, was impossible in the rocket. The whole machine roared like a gigantic tamtam to the vibration of the jets. Morosely Amalfi watched Hazleton connecting the mechanism in the nose with the powerleads from the pile—no mean balancing feat, considering the way the rocket pitched in its passage through the tortured Hevian air currents. The reactor itself had not been filled all the way, since its total capacity could not have been used, and the heavy water sloshed and foamed in the transparent cube.