Luke had drawn when he jerked his arm at the sound of the radio.
The man in the lead ship ran fingers through his cottony hair like a man sorely puzzled. He barely had room-in the tiny control bubble. 'All ships,' he said. 'What the hell did he mean by that?'
After a few moments someone suggested, 'Code message.' Others chorused agreement. Then Tartov asked, 'Lew, does Earth have something called a retarder-field?'
'I don't know. And there's nowhere we can beam a maser that some Earth ship won't get in it.' He sighed, for masers are always a chore to use. 'Someone ask the Political Section about retarder fields.'
'Retarder fields?'
'Retarder fields. And they sent us the full text of the message to Garner.'
Lit smiled with one side of his mouth. 'Retarder fields were part of Garner's story. I knew he'd be thorough, but this is ridiculous.' He thought of the thousands of Belt ships he'd put on standby alert, just in case Garner's fleet was intended to distract attention from things closer to home; and he thought of five mining ships and a priceless radar proof headed for what might as well be outer space. Garner was causing more than his fair share of activity. 'All right, I'll play his silly game. Beam Arm Headquarters and ask them what they know about retarder fields.'
Cutter was shocked. 'Ask the Arms?' Then he got the joke, and his face was chilled by a smile. On Cutter a smile always looked false.
It wasn't until Arm Headquarters cautiously denied all knowledge of retarder fields, that Lit Shaeffer began to have doubts.
With the first jarring clang of the alarm Garner was awake. He saw Anderson groan and open his eyes, but the eyes weren't seeing anything. 'Meteor strike!' he bawled.
Anderson's eyes became aware. 'Not funny,' he said.
'No?'
'No. Are you the type who yells 'Red Alert' on a crowded slidewalk? What time is it?'
'Oh three oh four.' Garner looked out at the stars. 'No Neptune. Why?'
'Just a sec.' Anderson fooled with the attitude jets. The ship swung around. Neptune was a blue-green ball, dim in the faint sunlight. Usually a world that close is awe-inspiring, if not blinding. This world only looked terribly cold.
'There it is. What'll I do with it?'
'Put us in a search orbit and start scanning with the radar. Can you set it to search for something as dense as dwarf star matter?'
'You mean, set it to search below the crust? Will do, Captain.'
'Anderson?'
'Uh huh?' He was already at work on the instrument panel.
'You will remember that we have a time limit?'
Anderson grinned at him. 'I can put this thing in a forced orbit and finish the search in five hours. Okay?'
'Great.' Luke started punching for breakfast.
'There's just one thing. We'll be in free fall some of the time. Can you take it?'
'Sure.'
Anderson moved in. When he finished, the ship balanced nose down, one thousand miles above the surface, driving straight at the planet with a force of more or less one gee. The 'more or less' came from Anderson's constant read justments.
'Now don't worry,' Anderson told him. 'I'm trying keep us out of the atmosphere, but if we do happen to land in the soup all I have to do is turn off the motor. The motor is all that's holding us in this tight orbit. We'd fall straight up into outer space.'
'So that's what a forced orbit is. How are you working the search?'
'Well, on a map it would look like I'm following lines of longitude. I'll turn the ship sideways for a few minutes every time we cross a pole, so we can keep changing our line of search. We can't just let the planet turn under us. It would take almost sixteen hours.'
The world rolled beneath them, one thousand miles below- more or less. There was faint banding of the atmosphere, but the predominant color was bluish white. Anderson kept the radar sweeping at and below the ward horizon, which on the radar screen looked like stratified air. It was solid rock.
'Understand, this is just to find out if it's there,' Anderson said an hour later. 'If we see a blob, we'll have pinned within five hundred miles. That's all.'
'That's all we need.'
At nine hours Anderson turned the ship around, facing outward. He ached from shoulders to fingertips. 'It's not there,' he said wearily. 'Now what?'
'Now we get ready for a fight. Get us headed toward Nereid and turn off the drive.'
The bright stars that were two fusion-drive spacecraft were too close to the tiny Sun to be easily seen. Anderson couldn't even find the Golden Circle. But Greenberg's ship came steadily on, blue and brightening at the edge of the Sun's golden corona. Garner and Anderson were on a ten-hour path to Nereid, Neptune's outermost moon. They watched as Greenberg's light grew brighter.
At nine thirty the light began to wiggle. Greenberg was maneuvering. 'Do we start shooting?' Anderson wanted to know.
'I think not. Let's see where he's going.'
They were on the night side of the planet. Greenberg was diving toward Neptune at a point near the twilight line. He was clearly visible.
'He's not coming toward Nereid,' said Anderson. They were both whispering, for some reason.
'Right. Either he left it on Triton, or it's in orbit. Could it be in orbit after that long?'
'Missile's tracking,' Anderson whispered.
Greenberg was past Triton before he started to declarate.
'In orbit?' wondered Garner. 'He must have nuts.'
Twenty minutes later Greenberg's ship was a wiggling between the horns of Neptune's cold blue crescent. They watched its slow crawl toward one of the horns. He was in a forced orbit, covering a search pattern of surface. 'Now what?' Anderson asked.
'We wait and see. I give up, Anderson. I can't understand it.'
'I swear it's not on Neptune.'
'Uh, oh.' Garner pointed. 'Hail, hail, the gang's all here.' A tiny spear of light was going by the lighted edge of the planet.
The blue-green ball was larger than he had anticipated. For the first time Kzanol regretted his carelessness in not finding out more about the eighth planet when he had the chance, some two billion years ago. He asked the pilot and copilot, who remembered that Neptune had 1.23 gee at surface. Earth gee, of course. For Kzanol it would be about two and a half.
Kzanol stood at one of the small windows, his jaw just above the lower edge, his leathery lips drawn back in a snarl of worry. Not long now! One way or another. For the pilot was nudging the ship into a search orbit.
Someone was already there.
It was the half-asleep free slave he'd passed at the halfway point. He was almost around the curve of the world, but he would be back in eighteen diltun or so. Kzanol had the pilot put the Golden Circle in orbit and turn off the motor. Let the slave do the searching.
The ship went by underneath, spitting fire at the stars. The slave was indeed marking out a search pattern. Kzanol let him go on.
And he wondered. How was he going to get down, on a motor which simply didn't have the power?
He let the pilot think about it, and the pilot told him. On rockets, wings, and rams, all going at once. But even the pilot couldn't think of a way back up.
Kzanol/Greenberg, of course, had no warning at all. At its present setting his radar would have shown
