CHAPTER VIII

The workers were inadequately armed. A few revolvers and little ammo. Lead pipes and with things that looked like weapons but were actually odds and ends of tools they'd snatched up when they'd heard the battle start. They were armed with guts, but it wasn't enough.

They swept across the field, dropping and struggling up, bulling ahead to come to grips with an enemy they didn't understand, couldn't fathom. Perhaps a score of them survived the tommyguns, got in amongst the Neanderthals. I saw one big fellow grab two ape-necks and smash the brutish skulls together, and even thirty feet off I could hear the bone splinter. When that man went down writhing I was as shocked as though he'd been my brother.

Where _was_ Howard, anyway?

No one was watching me. I stepped swiftly backward, turned and ran for the satellite. There was no hiding place there worth a damn. I stood against its gleaming silver side towering high above my head. I saw the end of the fight; even had my chance to take a small crack at the devils myself. A workman was brawling with a carbine as Old One came up behind him lifting him over his head and bringing his body down across an uplifted knee. There was a hoarse scream and then a loud crack as the man's back snapped. I lifted my automatic and shot the creature through the heart.

I looked for Skagarach then, and for my cousin, but they weren't in sight. I shoulder holstered my gun. The last worker now had been dropped and the Old Companions came toward the great wheel and me.

There were--I counted, automatically and hopefully--there were some fifty or more on their feet. Bill Cuff strode ahead of the horde, untouched and grinning wolfishly. And there was the ugly figure of Skagarach beside him.

I tackled Cuff immediately. "Skagarach says I can't have a gun, but I sure could have used one just now," I said, hoping he hadn't seen me firing the gun now, safely out of sight under my shirt.

Bill looked wickedly at Skagarach. Then he pulled a revolver from his belt and stuck it out to me. "Take it, you earned it."

Skagarach smirked; but his gray eyes flashed sullen hate at the big man, and I hoped anew that I could split them and make a rebellion in the ranks of the Neanderthals.

"I am second leader now," said Skagarach loudly, "as Old One is dead. I should have a voice in decisions such as that," and he gestured toward the gun I held. "However, I think Ray has earned it, too. Now let's get to business. We have to let the other musters know at once, so the three-stage rockets will come to Odo as fast as possible," he said, lifting his voice until it was a hoarse bellow. "Everyone quiet. This is a distance job, and difficult."

Bill Cuff watched him impatiently as the fox-face crinkled into furrows of thought. Then he said to me, not bothering to lower his voice, "You might think they'd have radioed for help, or that the scientists would be doing that now. Well, we've got hand-jammers on the LCPs that have been working since we touched the coast." Hand-jammers, invented only this year, tiny boxes that could jam radio, phone, television, in fact any method of communication from one spot to another. Odo was therefore isolated!

"Won't silence be suspicious?" I asked him. "Don't you suppose they'll begin to wonder, over on the mainland?"

"Hell, no. Too dangerous to keep up steady communications to a place that's supposed to be as dead secret as this hunk of rock. You can bet only emergencies would make 'em radio from here." He laughed. "You see, we laid our plans well."

* * * * *

I had just thought of something, something big. I blurted it out before I'd more than recognized it as a possibility. "Here, Bill, for God's sake, how do we know this thing is ready to leave the earth?" I pointed to the metal moon. "How do we know it won't just come apart when we try to lift it?"

"There again," said Cuff, as Skagarach gave him a dirty look and obviously tried to concentrate, "we haven't just presumed, or taken our chances. We've been watching the three-stage rockets--and for two days they've been ready to go in an instant's notice. And two of our fellows reported that they had stand-by orders; they're on the rocket crews," he added smugly.

Skagarach said, "I've established contact with Milo. Now will you clamp your goddam jaws shut!"

Bill Cuff nearly hit him. I caught Bill's eye and gave a grin, as one who would say, Let the jerk strut, _you_ can handle him later. Then, Bill turning away, I winked at Skagarach. Both ends had to be played against the middle fast and furious in this game.

"All right," said Skagarach finally. "Milo will keep touch while they make their moves, and so will Summers from post three. Now we have to get into this thing."

Cuff, overbearingly, shouted orders; and the Old Companions scattered to look for the entrance. A strange thing happened then, a weird thing to watch. Two of them remained standing before us as the others left. Cuff shouted at them. They did not move. Skagarach shook them by a shoulder each, and they collapsed without a sound. They had died on their feet, of wounds sustained in the fight. I was glad to see two more gone and at the same time I felt a chill at the tenacity of such a race.

A cry announced that the door had been found. We three ran over. There was a portable ramp running up to the sleek side. A door like that in a commercial plane showed its outline above the incline. Eagerly Cuff and several others leaped upward. And now they hit their first real unexpected obstruction, for the door could not possibly be opened from the outside. Not without TNT. It had been closed from within and it stared blindly at the Old Companions and in a moment they began to snarl and curse.

I turned away from them so that they wouldn't see my face, which I knew must be hopeful; and across the brilliant field toward us I saw a man and a woman approaching. The man, or rather brute, was the gray-eyed Trutch. The girl was my wife Nessa, and she was walking as though she were in pain.