CHAPTER X

Skagarach said, "They're here!" so sharply that it startled all of us, even Cuff. He continued more quietly. "They've brought down two of the rockets and the third will be here soon." He went on, and the other Old Companions crowded around him, listening eagerly as he told of the battles as the news was telepathed to him. I looked quickly for my guard, Trutch. He was turned with his back to me. I moved swiftly across to where Howard stood talking to Nessa. They saw me coming and their faces hardened. I started talking in a monotone, pitching my voice to reach them alone.

"Do you two still think I'm pulling a quisling?" I drew my automatic and handed it to Howard. "Put that away, quick. Now listen. We're going to whip these cave bastards. Don't ask questions, just answer, and make it fast. How do you run the air blower pump up to full capacity?"

Howard looked puzzled but not quite so uncertain of me. He gave me brief explicit instructions.

"And what would the effect be?" I asked.

"About a hundred-and-twenty-mile gale through the whole ship," he answered. As he talked I was handing him the extra clips for my gun and he was stowing them in his pockets. Even Nessa looked hopeful now. I flicked a glance every second or two at the huddling Neanderthals. There were a dozen of them here; the others were stationed throughout the satellite.

"Now," I said, "what would make this metal moon vibrate?"

"Vibrate? Nothing--wait. If you extended the solar mirrors, it wouldn't exactly vibrate, but it would move. The mirrors are under the hub, and extending them while we're on the ground would lift the wheel gradually up, likely tilt it, unless the mirror system broke under all this weight."

"Can you extend them?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Check your watch. 1:36 a.m. In ten minutes, you will have eluded these apes and you'll start the mirror mechanism. Take Nessa if you possibly can. When you've done it, come a-blasting."

"What?"

"Start gunning the apes."

Then Skagarach called to me, and I went over to him. "My brother's mad," I said. "I mean he's angry about this."

"What carrier of the dark blood wouldn't be?" said Skagarach loftily.

I said, "I think he'll come around to us eventually."

Trutch had come to my side again, frowning angrily at me. Skagarach said, "Let him alone, you fool, he's all right. Go watch his brother." And Trutch hulked over to Howard and Nessa.

I turned to Bill Cuff, "How soon do we take off?"

"As fast as the other musters can couple the rockets to the station," he said. "Shouldn't be too long. Why?"

"I was thinking maybe we could watch them at it."

"How?"

"On the viewplates back there," I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. "At least two or three of us could watch." The wheel had been closed and sealed by the air locks, but by opening the small view ports we would be able to see all around us, while we sat before screens that transferred the ports' vistas to us in the cabin.

Skagarach said, "Come with us," and he and Bill Cuff strode off. I kept pace with them, hoping the rest of the job would be as easy as this. We passed through two sections of the wheel and entered the viewing room and took seats before the scanners. Bill fiddled with the dials as I cast a look at the next door, some dozen feet from where I sat. Just beyond it was the air blower pump. I checked the time. I had six minutes.

* * * * *

The screens flashed to life. We saw the field around us, and two gigantic rockets, silver with thick blue bands dividing each into three sections, the three-stagers that would shortly hurtle us out beyond the atmosphere. Skagarach began working with the control panel too. At last we had a complete view of all sides of the wheel.

Many Old Companions, from the musters which had captured the rockets and brought them here by VTO tug, were hurrying from wheel-side to rocket, working under the orders of their experts to attach all components together. This was a purely mechanical job, but I doubted that it would be done quite so quickly as my comrades seemed to believe. I saw at least two fumbling attempts to clamp a single connection that failed miserably. Skagarach scowled and Cuff told him to telepath Milo to get down to business. They both breathed heavily through their nostrils.

Then I started to needle them.

It was a hell of a job, doing it without making them enraged with _me_. First I would ask Skagarach's opinion on something, then Cuff would sneer at it, and I would give Cuff a gentle push toward anger. It was like taking two wildcats, one in each hand, and teasing them so that they'd fly at each other's throats--ignoring the man who was actually baiting them. Sweat sprang out on my face and my hands were moist.

What did it was an inspired reference to telepathy. That was Cuff's sore spot. He turned to Skagarach, eyes narrowed, big hands working malevolently, and I looked at my watch and saw I had six seconds to go; I said, "But isn't telepathy the major need of a first leader?" with innocence dripping from my voice, and Skagarach laughed harshly and said a sane being would presume it was, and then Bill Cuff leaned over and hit him in the mouth.

Skagarach recoiled, spat, and then lashed back with a fist that, if smaller than Cuff's, was still larger than anything you'd care to have sock you in the nose. Then they were growling like dogs and trying to strangle one another.

I didn't count on this for a finish fight; I knew it must have happened often enough before, the meeting of these two brutal creatures; and I thought they were at bottom too dependent on each other, Cuff for Skagarach's telepathic powers and the yellow-hair for my cousin's primordial power, ever to actually fight to the death. But this was all I'd gambled for, this infuriated scuffle.

I leaned across the great board of instruments. The revolver I'd been given was in my hand, reversed. I struck the master switch twice, hard, with the butt of the gun. The second blow knocked it out of alignment and the screens went blank.

At that instant the space station shuddered, like a live thing beginning to arouse from sleep, and the floor vibrated a little beneath my feet. Howard had reached the switch of the solar mirrors, and gradually they were pushing out from the underside, pressing the ground, raising the wheel into the air. I wondered how long it would take them to reach their full extent or to break off. I prayed it would be a few minutes at least....

At the first sensation of movement, the titans had frozen, Skagarach in the act of drawing back a fist, Cuff with his hands twined in the long oily hair of the fox-faced Neanderthal. In a split second they were on their feet and leaning over the control panels.

"The viewers are dark!" yelled Skagarach.

"We've taken off!" I shouted in the same instant.

"They couldn't." That was Bill Cuff, jiggling a useless lever furiously. "Unless you ordered them too, you damn--"

"I did no such thing!" screeched Skagarach. If the viewers had been on, they would have seen that we were still on the ground. If Howard hadn't started the mirrors out, they'd have discovered my sabotage on the screens. The gamble had thus far panned out. Now I had to make the last try. I shoved open the door at my elbow, dashed into the chamber which held the air blower pump. Yelling wildly, "_What'll we do now?_" _I_ followed Howard's instructions for bringing the blower to full power. Then I leaped into the other room again.

They were so demoralized that I might have shot them both in that moment. Something held me from it. I think it was their inhuman strength, the knowledge that these two were the highest product of a race that was not human. Despite the dark blood I knew ran in my body too, I could not feel that I was Neanderthal; and I could not tackle the two toughest Neanderthals at the outset of the private war I had begun. I was--well, I must face it, I was _scared_.

As the blower vents started to pour a hurricane of air into the chambers of the great wheel, I leaped past them, flicked on the intercom switch, and bellowed, "Hit the bunks! Lie down and strap yourselves in! _Fast!_"

Skagarach had time for one approving look in my direction. "Good Companion!" he said. "You will do!" Then the three of us broke for the next room and the bunks.