His fingers closed on the stud, and he pulled. The engine roar ceased. On the floor behind him Tawney moved sluggishly, trying to sit up. Blood was dripping from his nose. He was still too stunned to know what had happened.
Greg leaped across the room, caught up the stunner, and then sank to the floor panting. “All right,” he said as his breath came back, “that’s all. Your ship may have trouble finding us now, but I bet our pilot can get us back to Mars.”
When they left the Sun Lake City infirmary it was almost noon, and the red sun was gleaming down from overhead.
Walking slowly, the Hunter twins moved along the surface street toward the U.N. building.
“Hell recover without any trouble,” the doctor assured them. “He caught the stunner beam in the shoulder, and it will be a while before he can use it, but Johnny Coombs will be hard to keep down.”
They had promised Johnny to return later. They had had check-ups themselves. Tom’s eyes were surrounded by purple splotches, and his broken left arm was in a sling. Greg’s arms and legs were so stiff he could hardly move them. The major and the lieutenant were sore but uninjured.
Now the boys walked without talking. Already a U.N. linguist was at work on the record tapes from the metal cylinder, and a mathematician was doing a preliminary survey on the math symbols on the metal block.
“I hope there’s no trouble reading them,” Greg said.
“There won’t be. It’ll take time, but the records are decipherable. And Dr. Raymond was certain that the engineering can be figured out. Earth is going to get her star-drive, all right.”
“Well, one thing’s sure—there’ll be some changes made, with the U.N. moving out into the belt,” Greg said. “And we’ve got work to do.”
“You mean the trial?” Tom said. “I guess. The major says that Jupiter Equilateral is trying to pin the whole thing on Tawney now. But they won’t get away with it, if we can stand together on our story of what happened.”
Greg looked at his brother and grinned. “You know something, Twin?” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to have much trouble standing together from now on about anything.”
Somewhere in the distance the twins heard the rumble of engines. They stopped and watched as a great silvery cargo ship rose from the space port and headed up into the dark blue sky. They watched it until it disappeared from sight.
They were both thinking the same thing.
An Earth-bound ship, powerful and beautiful, limited to the sun and nine planets, unable to reach farther out. But some day soon a different kind of ship would rise.