“Bad luck for us in that case, Ross.” The ship steadied on a due-west course and flashed across the heavens and over the horizon.
“Somebody decided a braking ellipse or two was in order. What about line of sight?”
“No sweat. The GCA jockey—and I’d bet it’s Delafield himself—pushes a button that hooks him into the high-power dish at every rocket field on Halsey’s. It’s been all
thought out. There’s a potential fortune aboard that long-liner and Fields Administration wants its percentage for servicing and accommodating.”
“Wonder what they have?”
“I already asked that one, Ross.”
“So you did.”
They lapsed into silence until the rocket boomed in again from the east, high and slow. The big dish swiveled abruptly and began tracking again.
“He’ll try to bring her down this time. Yes! There go fore and stabilizing jets.”
Flame jutted from the silvery speck high in the blue; its apparent speed slowed to a crawl. It vanished for a second as steering jets turned her slowly endwise. They caught sight of the stern jets when they blasted for the descent.
It was uneventful—just the landing of a very, very big rocket. When a landing is successful it is like every other successful landing ever made.
But the action that the field whirled into immediately following the landing was far from routine. The bullhorns roared that all traders, wipers, rubbernecks, and visitors were to get behind the ready lines and stay there. All Class-Three-and-higher Field personnel were to take stations for longliner clearance. The weapons and decontamination parties were to take their stations immediately. Captain Delafield would issue all future orders and don’t let any of the traders talk you out of it, men. Captain Delafield would issue all future orders.
Ross watched in considerable surprise as Field men working with drilled precision broke out half a dozen sleek, needle-nosed guns from an innocent-looking bay of the warehouse and manhandled them into position. From another bay a large pressure tank was hauled and backed against the lock of the starship. Ross could see the station medic bustlingly supervise that, and the hosing of white gunk onto the juncture between tank and ship.
Delafield crossed the stretch from the GCA complex to the tank, vanished into it through a pressure-fitted door and that was that. The tank had no windows.
Ross said to Marconi, wonderingly: “What’s all this
about? There was Doc Gibbons handling the pressure tank, there was Chunk Blaney rolling out a God-damned cannon I never knew was there—how many more little secrets are there that I don’t know about?”
Marconi grinned. “They have gun drill once a month, my young friend, and they never say a word about it. Let the right rabble-rouser get hold of the story and he might sail into office on a platform of ‘Keep the bug-eyed monsters off of Halsey’s Planet.’ You have to have reasonable precautions, military and medical, though—and this is the straight goods—there’s never been any trouble of either variety.”
The conversation died and there was a long, boring hour of nothing. At last Delafield appeared again. One of the decontamination party ran up in a jeep with a microphone.
“What’ll it be?” Ross demanded. “Alphabetic order? Or just a rush?”
The announcement floored him. “Representative of the Haarland Trading Corporation please report to the decontamination tank.”
The representative of the Haarland Trading Corporation was Marconi.
“Hell,” Ross said bitterly. “Good luck with them, whoever they are.”
Marconi brooded for a moment and then said gruffly, “Come on along.”
“You mean it?”
“Sure. Uh—naturally, Ross, you’ll give me your word not to make any commercial offers or inquiries without my permission.”
“Oh. Naturally.” They started across the field and were checked through the ready line, Marconi cheerfully presenting his identification and vouching for Ross.
Captain Delafield, at the tank, snapped, “What are you doing here, Ross? You’re Oldham’s man. I distinctly said——”
“My responsibility, Captain. Will that do it?” Marconi asked.
Delafield snapped, “It’ll be your fundament if Haarland
hears about it. Actually it’s the damnedest situation—they asked for Haariand’s.”
Marconi looked frightened and his hand involuntarily went to his breast pocket. He swallowed and asked, “Where are they from?”
Delafield grimaced and said, “Home.”