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They now had a probe that wouldn't probe while obviously working and fifteen irises they could put in front of bug devices.
Lars popped up again, saying they sure were quiet, and they told him to get lost. But presently Ker took a disc recording of hammering and pounding and drilling and let it play.
They cleaned up traces of their work so far and hid their products.
Suddenly they realized it had been a long day. They hadn't eaten. They had a long way to go, but that, they agreed, was enough for now.
Jo
All's well. In three days engineer the transportation of the thirty-three Ps now in compound jailhouse to stated destination Cornwall. Report them crashed at sea. Deliver to the doctor. Not before three days. You will have no trouble with them. They'll be screaming to leave. Eat this note.
Ker said he'd deliver it and rushed away.
Jo
Chapter 2
A bit lost in Char's twelve-foot bed, a bit tense in this echoing, empty compound, Jo
Char, in packing, had tossed out odds and ends that he hadn't cared to take back to Psychlo with him, and one of them was a Psychlo infant's “History of Psychlo," maybe from Char's own early schooling, for it said under the coverleaf, in an immature scrawl, “Char's Book. You Stole it so give it back!” and then below that, “Or I’ll claw you!” Well, Char wouldn't claw anybody now: he was dead, by Terl's thrust, quite a time now.
Because Ker had mentioned underground mines, Jo
The labyrinth was so extensive that it caused some buildings on the surface to sag from time to time.
He was just reading about the “First interplanetary War to End Mineral Starvation” when Ker came back.
Ker looked a bit grave, even through his face mask. "Du
Du
They had taken Du
Du
“It means,” concluded Ker, “that they expected you to come in and they've got their eyes out all over the place. We got to work fast, be careful, and get you out of here as soon as we can.”
Jo
They were at it again before dawn, working fast. Ker had another disc recording of hammering and pounding and he put it on. The kind of work they were doing didn't sound at all like duct work.
What they had to do now was plant “eyes” and picture transmitters so they could not be seen or detected.
They attacked the lead glass dome and bored “bullet holes” in it in the exact right places; getting around the problem of their being covered by the blinds if drawn. The very top of one of these upper-level domes was much more thickly tinted than the sides, so the detectors (“readers,” Ker called them) had to be up pretty high.
The “bullet holes” also had to be starred out, which is to say, given hairline cracks to make it look like they had come in from the outside. For good measure they put some in other domes and didn't repair them so that the condition appeared more general than in just Terl's quarters.
They sank readers and transmitters into the holes. Then they repaired the holes with one-way, see-through “bubble patch.” They put more glass repair sealing roughly on the “cracks.”
Each reader had a leaded iris in front of it and was in a little lead box. The result looked like a crudely repaired hole fixed up in slovenly fashion by careless workmen. Each of these was focused on a different part of the work areas in the two rooms.
“He won't fool with that,” gri
“He'll be afraid he'll let his breathe-gas out and air in!”
It was afternoon by the time they completed the dome readers. They tested them with the probe and receivers. They went blind and undetectable with the probe on and read everything in their path with the scope off.
They took a short lunch break and turned off the disc that had been blasting their ears in. There was suddenly more din outside.
Ker went to the door and unbarred it. Lars got a whiff of breathe-gas and backed up. He demanded Ker to come out and talk to him right now.
“You're interrupting our work,” said Ker. But he went out in the hall.
“You've got your nerve!” said Lars, quivering with rage. “You gave me a handful of junk that had radioactive dust on it! You got me in trouble! When I showed it to Terl this morning, it started to explode when it got near his breathe-mask. You knew it would! He almost bit me!”
“All right, all right, all right!” said Ker. “We will clean up everything in here before we turn on any big amount of breathe-gas."
“Those were radioactive bullets!” shouted Lars.
“All right!” said Ker. “They came in through the dome. We'll find them all. Don't get so excited!”
“Trying to get me in trouble,” said Lars.
“You stay out of here,” said Ker. “It rots human bones, you know.”
Lars didn't know. He backed up. He left.
Angus said, when Ker had come back in and barred the door, “Were they really radioactive bullets?”
Ker laughed and began to shove goo-food in his mask. Jo
“It was flitter,” said Ker, laughing. “It’s a compound that throws off blue sparks when sunlight hits it. I dusted some of it on the bullets. Harmless. A kid's toy.” He was laughing even harder. Then he sighed. "We had to explain the bullet holes, so we had to 'find' some bullets. But that Terl-he is so clever that he sometimes can be awful dumb!”
Jo