"So far, I haven't a choice. I don't want to, but I must to keep your people from doing the same to mine.. What do you suggest as a way out?"
"I don't know the recognition code for Deimos. Undoubtedly it has been changed since the last time I was there. But if I made a plea, my cousin might listen, he might allow us to land. However, he probably would think it was a Soviet trick."
"Even if he accepted you and your story, things won't be that simple," Broward said. "I have to guard against a trick, too. I can't place my mission in jeopardy. But we'll give your cousin a try... now..."
Things were not that simple. Neither were they so complicated, but it did take time to bring them about. Broward altered course to take him far out and then to bring him in again within radarshadow of the moonlet, where the Martian detectors would not find him. Even so, he was open to detection for a long time. At any moment, he expected his equipment to announce the presence of radar or laser beams crossing across his ship or to tell him that it had picked up blips that must be missiles or ships rising from the surface of Mars. He did not expect to see anything coming from Deimos itself, for Quiroga had told him that it had suffered heavily from attack. First, the Soviet missiles had blasted it when the Axe had sprung their attack on Mars. The base on Deimos had expended all its missiles during the repulse. Moreover, its radar and laser external equipment had been wrecked.
New equipment had been brought up from the planet and installed, but Howards would give it no missiles because of a shortage. Then, the South Africans, trapped near this sector, had tried a landing and a storming, the first
Having determined from the Argentinean that the Deimos base still had some communications equipment, Broward then approached Deimos within two hundred kilometers. It was easy to obtain and maintain the tight-beam contact with Deimos. The moonlet always kept one face toward its primary.
No challenge came from the base. Evidently, the Axe personnel did not want to invite attack; they were playing dead. But, on the side opposite from him, was a beam sending messages to the main base, Osorno, in the area of Eos.
"This is Pablo Quiroga speaking. Commandant Saavedra! Patricio Saavedra! For the love of God, answer! This is Pablo Quiroga, your cousin!"
There was no answer. Quiroga continued to call. Minutes passed. Then, a voice said, "Pablo? What is the matter? What are you doing out there? What is going on?"
Quiroga said, "I am in a lifeboat; I am the only survivor of a battle with a South African fleet. I want permission to land."
Saavedra's voice, with much relief in it, said, "Thanks to Mary, then, that we are out of weapons. Otherwise, I would have had to follow orders and fire on you, even if you were my cousin. That is, unless you had given the proper code, and you could not do that. It has been changed."
"O.K.," Broward said. "Into your suit."
Quiroga got dressed. Broward eased the scout onto a landing circle. This was formed of stone which the Argentineans had smoothed out and filled in. Around it rose the tortured broken peaklets that covered the surface of the tiny satellite. At the base of one of the projections was a metal protrusion, the port for entrance of personnel.
The scout's inner port opened, and Broward said, "Out you go. I'll be waiting to hear from you. But not for long."
The inner port closed; the outer opened. Broward delayed a few seconds to give Quiroga time to get clear before shooting the scout away. In the view plates, he could see the armored figure of the man get smaller, then disappear. Presently, even the landing circle was indistinguishable. The cragged and peaked surface became smooth, and Deimos was a small spindle against the round red-and-bluegreen-and-gray sphere of the mother planet
Tense, Broward waited. He kept his eyes on the scopes for the first intimations of enemy action from the surface. Now and then, he flicked a look at the moonlet, though he knew that any communication from it would not be visual. What could be going on beneath its rocky cover, in the many hollowed-out rooms and tunnels? Quiroga would have a strange and unconvincing story to tell. For all the commandant knew, there might be a fleet of Soviet vessels nearby. Not that he could believe that very long. Since Quiroga knew the true state of Deimos' defenses, and since he must have been landed by a Soviet, the Soviet must also know that Deimos was defenseless.
In fact, Quiroga's story would be so extraordinary that Saavedra would have no choice but to consider it true. The question was, would he then take the last chance that Mars, and perhaps the human race, had? Or would he attempt to seize Broward?
A half-hour passed. An hour. Deimos and the scout ship kept pace in their hurtling around Mars. Every few seconds, Broward looked at the chronometer on the panel. Fifteen more minutes. If Quiroga had not convinced Saavedra by then, neither of them could stop the death of all life on Mars. He, Broward, would not give them a second past the specified time.
As it was, he had placed his mission in deep peril. But he did have a little hook on which to hang a little hope. That was the fact that Saavedra had not contacted Osorno yet about the Soviet ship. If he had, ships would have appeared on the radarscopes.
Ten minutes. Broward looked at the button that would send the bomb flashing towards the target. It would take the shortest route possible, and it did not care what part of Mars it struck. Any place was as good as any other. It would be traveling so swiftly that it was extremely improbable that an intercept missile could destroy it. So tremendous would its velocity be that, if it had been an ordinary missile or ship, it would have burned up even in the very thin air of Mars. But it was enclosed in a sheath of intertron, a material that would have lasted a long time in the thick atmosphere of Jupiter before melting.
Five minutes. Broward raved and cursed. Did he have to do this because of a man's stupidity or his loyalty to a mad-man or to a flag? Three minutes. Why wait? Quiroga was probably under arrest. Or was arguing in vain, would argue until doom's day.
Then, the receiver came alive. "Captain Broward! The commandant agrees to talk to you!"
"All right," said Broward, aware that he was sweating and that he was trembling. "We'll do as I said. No tricks now. I'll be on the watch!"
"I give you my word of honor, may Christ strike me dead, if we are planning any treachery."
Broward sent his scout in but not back to the circle. It landed on a ledge of rock which overlooked the port Should the Argentineans charge out with a mobile laser, they would be cut down by his own beams. Or he could dart off to one side before they could bring it into action and duck behind the peak.
Two men in suits stepped out from the port. They looked around, spotted him, waved, and then leaped into space. Unhampered by the feeble gravity of Deimos, they soared up. Before they had gone far, they were controlling the packs on their back; these sped them straight to the scout. Broward lifted the ship up and back over the peak to take him out of sight and range of the port. A second later, the men rose over its narrow jagged top and landed beside the ship.
He shut the outer port and opened the inner just enough so that he could see the two men within.
"Strip off your suits," he said.
"We haven't got anything hidden under them," said Saavedra loudly. Nevertheless, he and Quiroga obeyed. Saavedra was a tall powerfully built man whose handsome face had a family likeness to his cousins. His hair was much darker, but his eyes were blue, and his nose was much bolder.100
"I have a gun beside me on this seat," Broward said. "I hope I won't have to use it. I would like it if I never had to use a gun again."
"There has never been a time in man's history when somebody, somewhere, wasn't using a weapon," Saavedra replied. "But that is no reason for thinking that the future has to be like the past. We are in a situation new to the world."