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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 perso
"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 perso
The scout's i
The i
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 tu
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 pla
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 i
"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."
"You talk like a man I could like," said Broward. "Tell me, what is the situation on Mars?"
"I don't know what use the information will be to you," said the commandant. "But I will do almost anything to keep that bomb—if there is such a bomb—from being delivered. I..."
"There is such a bomb. Believe me."
"I can't afford not to believe you. The situation on Mars? It is not what anyone would expect."
Saavedra paused, and Broward said, eagerly, "What do you mean?"
Saavedra took a deep breath, then exploded it. "Rats!" For a moment, Broward misunderstood him. "Who are rats?"
"Rats. The rats themselves. The rats on Mars."
Broward said that he did not understand.
"There are rats on Mars," Saavedra said slowly. "Rats from Earth. They are in our bases in every conceivable hiding place. And they are thriving in that complex of caverns that exists beneath the base of Osorno. Perhaps you do not know it, but Osorno was built about a tangle of caverns that must run for hundreds of miles under the surface. It was discovered when the base was first established, about twenty years ago. It had an atmosphere, although not as thick as Earth's, of course."