Evidence for it came before the planet had made one revolution under the Yarrow's hiding place in space. The space-phone speaker in the ceiling of the control room clicked, loudly, and then a voice said, "What ship's that?"
The Yarrow's mate jumped visibly. Trent nodded. He pointed to the space-phone cut-off. It was turned to "receive only." The Yarrow could receive transmissions from other ships in normal space, but the microphone would not transmit. The receiver had picked up a voice from the ground below to a ship that must just have come out of overdrive.
"Who would it be?" demanded another voice sourly. "We're coming in."
A pause. The first voice again, "Who's that talking?"
The second voice, as sourly as before; "Go to hell, will you? This is the Cytheria. Back from getting the mail on Loren. Where'm I landing?"
"Same place you took off from. Any trouble?"
"Grid man started to ask questions. We lifted by rocket. Picked up another ship's drive on the way. You hear it?"
"No. Nothing," said the first voice. "Shoot a flare."
Trent took a deep breath. This was a break. He'd beaten the Cytheria here. She was going to land, of course, in normal space. There was no other solidity. And she was going to shoot a flare to allow of her location from the ground, so she could be talked down where there was no landing-grid, and yet a particular place of landing was requisite.
He saw the flare, a strictly emergency device when a ship couldn't be found by the grid-operator where it ought to be. This was a luridly red ball of flame, giving off millions of candlepower of crimson light. Trent got it centered on a vision-screen and turned up the magnification. He saw the Cytheria, a glittering rounded form in emptiness. He heard the voices.
"You're too far east." That would be galactic east, of course, not east on the planet now a gibbous disk beyond the Cytheria. "That's better … A little more." Then, "Good enough. We'll fine it when you get lower. Start down."
Trent watched the magnified image of the Cytheria. It was still tiny. It moved swiftly down toward the planet's surface. That would be the Lawlor drive helping to aim and control it on the way down, and making those fine adjustments a rocket designed for emergency use couldn't be expected to take.
Trent said over his shoulder to the mate, "Use a camera on the vision-screen. We're going to need pictures."
He watched tensely. There was a promontory jutting out into the sea. It was a good landmark. There were mountains inland. One of them smoked. The Cytheria went down and down, dwindling. The first voice he'd heard made curt comments from time to time. That voice was aground. The voice coming from the Cytheria replied. Profanely.
He heard the camera clicking. The mate was photographing the vision-screen with its pictures of an extremely tiny ship growing smaller and ever smaller as it descended.
Then there were heavy rocket fumes. White smoke. The Cytheria's rockets were slowing her, now, to make a gentle landing. Up to this moment they had merely checked her descent. Now they had to stop it. The Lawlor drive became more important. It could neither take a ship off nor land one, but in cooperation with rockets the results were admirable.
It landed. Rocket fumes blew away. The space-phone said sardonically, "Welcome to our city! Fancy seeing you here!"
The voice which was the Cytheria swore wearily. There was a clicking in the space-phone speaker. Somewhere, a phone had been turned off.
Trent found fury shaking him. Then he said evenly, "I hope those pictures came out well. We're going to need them."
The mate pulled out the long strip of film. He peeled off the paper strip of positive. He glanced at it and held it out to Trent.
"These will do," said Trent. "Get them printed as big as they'll stay sharp. They're our maps."
The mate disappeared. He looked dubious. But he would manage somehow to get the small, self-developed pictures reproduced. In the ordinary course of business, written records were normally photocopied as routine. The mate went to wrestle with the copier. Trent pressed the all-hands button, and his voice echoed through every compartment of the ship.
"All hands," he said icily. "I'm going aground. There'll be some fighting and some loot. Anybody who wants to be ship-keeper can stay aboard. He gets no fighting and no loot. Everybody who's looking for action get set. He does get fighting, and he does get loot."
He made no reference to nobler reasons for landing on a pirate-occupied planet where there would certainly be more pirates than the party the Yarrow could send to ground. He didn't speak of the possible rescue of prisoners whom the pirates would otherwise murder. In fact, he appealed only to the combative and the mercenary instincts of his spacemen. But that was immediately understandable. Actually, an exactly similar appeal by another ship captain might have produced no volunteers at all. But Trent had actually to choose two men to leave behind with the mate as ship-keepers. There'd be McHinny left aboard, too.
But for whatever reason, the crew of the Hecla, the salvage crew, and the crew of the Yarrow were ready to follow Trent anywhere. They'd been in action with him before, but their confidence in him didn't come from that. The real reason was that he'd led them in a stupendous brawl in the dives outside the Sira spaceport.
He listed the equipment he wanted each man to carry. Satchel-bombs, two per man. They were shaped-charge bombs, and they were highly dependable for demolition. There were detonator-bombs, used by police for the moral effect of their sound. Trent mentioned modifications that could be made to them so they'd have more effect, though they'd be less moral. It involved nuts and bolts and broken welding-rod and scrap-iron.
They'd also carry small-arms. Rifles, yes. Pistols, definitely. As the Yarrow's crewmen envisioned themselves festooned with such an armament, an extraordinary atmosphere of cheer and enthusiasm developed. He ordered masks against their own fog-gas bombs, and he insisted that each man carry ample ammunition.
When they gathered, crowding, to get into the Yarrow's spaceboats, the feel of things was curiously like a no-longer-remembered incident in the life of a Captain Trent of the late eighteenth century. That Captain Trent had taken three-quarters of his ship's crew in that ship's small boats, and rowed into a harbor with them in the murky blackness of a starless, moonless, abysmally dark night. That Captain Trent was leading a cutting-out expedition nobody else would have tried. He happened to succeed.
This Captain Trent pocketed folded maps, which were actually parts of the ground surface of the planet they were to land on. He got into the lead boat, having given instructions to all his followers.
The spaceboats headed down for the planet. Captain Trent's expression changed when they were well on their way. There was zestful, uniformed anticipation all around him. But in the blackness of the spaceboat Trent's face went bleak.
He was thinking, of course, that this foray was too late. If he'd been here upon this errand long enough ago, it could have accomplished something. Maybe. But now it was much too late.