World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

The radio beeped. "Garner calling. You haven't called. Hasn't anything happened yet?"

"No," said Lew into the separate maser mike. "They should have hit by now."

Minutes dragging by. The white star of the honeymoon special burned serenely.

"Then something's wrong." Garner's voice had crossed the light-minutes between him and the fleet. "Maybe the disintegrator burned off the radar antennae on your missiles."

"Son of a bitch! Sure, that's exactly what happened. Now what?"

Minutes.

"Our missiles are okay. If we can get close enough we can use them. But that gives them three days to find the Amplifier. Can you think of a way to hold them off for three days?"

"Yeah." Lew was grim. "I've an idea they won't be landing on Pluto." He gnawed his lip, wondering if he could avoid giving Garner this information. Well, it wasn't exactly top secret, and the Arm would probably find out anyway. "The Belt has made trips to Pluto, but we ever tried to land there. Not after the first ship took a close-up spectroscopic reading…"

They played at a table just outside the pilot room door. Kzanol/Greenberg had insisted. He played with one ear cocked at the radio. Which was all right with Kzanol, since it affected the other's playing.

Garner's voice came, scratchy and slightly distorted, after minutes of silence. "It sounds to me as if it all depends on where they land. We can't control that. We'd better think of something else, just in case. What have you got besides missiles?"

The radio buzzed gently with star static.

"I wish we could hear both sides," Kzanol growled. "Can you make any sense of that?"

Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head. "We won't, either. They must know we're in Garner's maser beam. But it sounds like they know something we don't."

"Four."

"I'm taking two. Anyway, it's nice to know they can't shoot at us."

"Yes. Well done." Kzanol spoke with absent-minded authority, using the conventional overspeak phrase to congratulate a slave who shows proper initiative. His eye was on his cards. He never saw the killing rage in his partner's face. He never sensed the battle that raged across the table, as Kzanol/Greenberg's intelligence fought his fury until it turned cold. Kzanol might have died that day, howling as the disintegrator stripped away suit and skin and muscle, without ever knowing why.

Ten days, twenty-one hours since takeoff. The icy planet hung overhead, huge and dirty white, with the glaring highlight which had fooled early astronomers.