'It can wait,' Jurg Tec said. 'I'll buy the next round.'
'Sure,' agreed Gramp, 'ain't nothin' so important you can't have another drink.'
'You know,' said the senator, 'I was going to make a speech.'
The two old soldiers stared at him in disbelief.
'It's a fact,' the senator told them, 'but I can't with this eye. And will I catch hell for not making that speech! That's what I get for sneaking out with my camera.'
'Maybe we can help you out,' suggested Gramp. 'Maybe we could square things for you.'
'Maybe we could,' squeaked the Martian.
'Listen, boys,' said the senator, 'if I were to go out in a ship for a tour of the surface and if the ship broke down and I couldn't get back in time to make my speech, nobody would blame me for that, would they?'
'You're dang right they wouldn't,' said Gramp.
'How about the eye?' asked Jurg Tec.
'Shucks,' said Gramp, 'we could say he run into somethin'.'
'Would you boys like to come along with me?' asked the senator.
'Bet your life,' said Gramp.
Jurg Tec nodded.
'There's some old battle hulls out there I'd like to see,' he said. 'Ships that were shot down during the battle and just left there. Shot up too bad to salvage. The pilot probably would land and let us look at one or two of them.'
'Better take along your camera,' suggested Gramp. 'You'd ought to get some crackin' good pictures on one of 'em old tubs.'
IV
The navigator tore open the door of the control room, slammed it behind him and leaned against it. His coat was ripped and blood dripped from an ugly gash across his forehead.
The pilot started from his controls.
'The robots!' screamed the navigator. 'The robots are loose!'
The pilot blanched. 'Loose!' he screamed back.
The navigator nodded, panting.
In the little silence they could hear the scraping and clashing of steel claws throughout the ship.
'They got the crew,' the navigator panted. 'Tore them apart, back in the engine room.'
The pilot looked through the glass. The surface of Ganymede was just below. He had been leveling off with short, expert rocket blasts, for an easy coast into Satellite City.
'Get a gun!' he shouted. 'Hold them off! Maybe we can make it.'
The navigator leaped for the rack where the heavy flame rifles hung. But he was too late.
The door buckled beneath a crushing weight. Savage steel claws caught it and ripped it asunder.
The pilot, glancing over his shoulder, saw a nightmare of mad monsters clawing into the control room. Monsters manufactured at the Robots. Inc., plant on Mars, enroute to Satellite City for the show at the Ganymede Battle reunion.
The flame rifle flared, fusing the hideous head of one monster, but the tentacles of another whipped out, snared the pilot with uncanny ease. The pilot screamed, once — a scream chopped short by choking bands of steel.
Then the ship spun crazily, out of control, toward the surface.
'An old cruiser hull is right over that ridge,' the pilot told the senator. 'It's in pretty good condition, but the nose was driven into the ground by the impact of its fall, wedged tight into the rock, so that all hell and high water couldn't move it.'
'Earthian or Marshy?' asked Gramp.
The pilot shook his head. Tm not sure,' he said. 'Earth, I think.'
The senator was struggling into his space suit.
'You remember the deal we made?' he asked the pilot. 'You're to say your ship broke down. You'll know how to explain it. So you couldn't get me back in time to make the speech.'
The pilot grinned. 'Sure do, senator,' he said.
Gramp paused with his helmet poised above his head. 'Senator!' he shouted.
He looked at the senator.
'Just who in tarnation are you?' he asked.
'I'm Senator Sherman Brown,' the senator told him. 'Supposed to dedicate the battle monument.'
'Well, I'll be a freckled frog!' said Gramp.
Jurg Tec chuckled.
Gramp whirled on him. 'No wisecracks, Marshy,' he warned.
'Here, here,' shouted the senator. 'You fellows quiet down. No more fighting.'
Space-armored, the four of them left the ship and tramped up the hill toward the ridge top.
Faintly in his helmet-phones, Gramp heard the crunch of carbon dioxide snow beneath their feet, its hiss against the space suits.
Jupiter was setting, a huge red and orange ball with a massive scallop gnawed from its top half. Against this darkened, unseen segment of the primary rode the quarter moon of tiny To, while just above, against the black of space, hung the shining sickle of Europa. The sun had set many hours before.
'Pretty as a Christmas tree,' Gramp said.
'Them tourists go nutty over it,' the pilot declared. That taxi of mine has been worked to death ever since the season started. There's something about old Jupiter that gets them.'
'I remember,' Jurg Tec said, 'that it was just like this before the battle. My pal and I walked out of camp to look at it.'
'I didn't know you Marshies ever got to be pals,' said Gramp. 'Figured you were too danged mean.'
'My pal,' said Jurg Tec, 'was killed the next day.'
'Oh,' said Gramp.
They walked in silence for a moment.
'I'm right sorry about your pal,' Gramp told the Martian then.
They topped the ridge.
There she is,' said the pilot, pointing.
Below them lay the dark shape of a huge space ship, resting crazily on the surface, with the stern tilted at a grotesque angle, the nose buried in the rock-hard soil.
'Earth, all right,' said Gramp.
They walked down the hillside toward the ship.
In the derelict's side was a great hole, blasted by a shot of long ago, a shot that echoed in dim memory of that battle forty years before.
'Let's go in,' said the senator. 'I want to take some pictures. Brought some night equipment along. Take pictures in pitch black.'
Something moved inside the ship, something that glinted and shone redly in the light of setting Jupiter.
Astonished, the four fell back a step.
A space-armored man stood just inside the ship, half in shadow, half in light. He held two flame pistols in his hands and they were leveled at Gramp and the other three.
'All right,' said the man, and his voice was savage, vicious, with just a touch of madness in it, T got you covered. Just hoist out your guns and let them drop.'
They did not move, astounded, scarcely believing what they saw.
'Didn't you hear me!' bellowed the man. 'Drop your guns onto the ground.'
The pilot went for his flame pistol, in a swift blur of motion that almost tricked the eye.
But the gun was only half out of its holster when one of the guns in the hands of the man inside the ship
