In the end, theAvengerseemed to whip around almost in its own length. Jon balanced himself with effort, his stomach rising within him. He was giddy and nauseated. His eyes strained for something to focus on, to give him perspective. There was nothing. He was still blind.
"We blasted every foot on that side of the moon," McPartland said bitterly, "but we didn't get the machinery."
"No, man," agreed McTavish who had come up to the control room again. "That cursed devil's mantle is still there!"
The Captain's blue eyes burned into the forward screen. "They're waiting on Terra Base, too," he grated. "But we'd see the break first. The light would come back at the edges, and—" he stumbled over the implication of the next words, "work-in-toward-the-center!"
McTavish's grey eyes blazed suddenly. "In toward the center, man! Right! But the moon isn't at the center!"
Jon was already shouting into the phone: "Observation Officer. Locate the exact center of that area, in relation to this ship, Terra, and Luna.
"Navigation! Get bearings from Observation, and plot torpedo course for dead center."
"This will do it, Sir," shouted the Engineer. "I should have thought of it, Sir, begging your pardon."
"It may be well protected, Sir," Clemens suggested.
Clemens quietly relayed the report from Observation: "Impossible to locate exact center, Sir. Whole area is shifting constantly, unpredictably." He shot a look of glum satisfaction at McTavish, and added: "The approximate center is on the far side of Terra and Luna, Sir."
"A space ship," McPartland said savagely, "flying an erratic course. We don't have much chance finding it with a torpedo."
"The torpedoes can be adjusted for magnetism, Sir," said the Engineer.
McPartland smiled. "If the torpedoes were floating free in space and we can adjust them to do that—the field would attract them to any ship within a Spacial Unit.
"Mister McTavish, I want to sow a hundred of them as magnetic space mines in the approximate center of your devil's mantle."
McTavish released his torpedoes into the blackness. One by one they blasted off. The three in the control room watched their fiery jets disappear into the emptiness of the forward screen.
"They'll go dead and float," McPartland told Clemens, "and explode on contact." He clenched his big hands, and laughed harshly. "If we could only see it!"
"How long, Sir?" Reynolds asked quietly. "Will it be soon enough?"
"It's got to be soon enough," the Captain snapped.
"If Marshal Denton surrenders, Sir," Clemens pointed out, "and the light is restored, the outlaws would see the mines. They could—"
The Engineer's voice rang in his headset, and he winced. The others heard McTavish's words over the phone: "The light! The light, man! They hit one of the torpedoes!"
"We hope—" Clemens said.
Jon's glance swept to the forward screen. Starlight was cutting into the edges of the blackness. He watched that hated blackness shrink—shrink, until Terra floated blue and beautiful oh the view screen.
"Terra," Jon whispered, half to himself, "Whose Terra?"
The Lieutenant-Commander winced again as another voice rang in his ears, and he relayed without an attempt at pessimism: "Observation reports wreckage of ship, Sir, and presence of ninety-eight floating mines."
McPartland spoke into the phone himself: "Navigation. Course for Terra Base. Pass through mined area. Mister Reynolds would like a little practice—destroying the extra mines."
Reynolds, a grateful smile on his round face, ran his finger lovingly over the calculators, and spoke into his mike: "All ray stations. Fire on command only." The calculators clicked. "Station Six, range—"
Almira Denton looked up at Captain Jon McPartland with eyes that were the soft hue of Terra itself.
"Almira," he said, "about that—that case report."
She smiled, and the curve of her soft lips was as it had been in his mind since he left on patrol. "Jon darling," she laughed. "We can forget that. When the Congress gets through ferreting out its traitors, and hearing your report, father won't need my help with them."
"But I want you to analyze me," he insisted.
"I mean to, Jon," she agreed gently. "But only for my own information."
"And mine, too, darling," he said. "I want you to analyze a dream," McPartland said firmly. "I keep seeing a little asteroid—one I explored when I had a one-man Patrol scout, way back. I keep seeing it with an atmosphere unit installed, and a Terra-gravity unit. There's a house, and a beautiful woman with red-gold hair and gorgeous eyes, and a little boy named Patrick, and a little girl named Kathleen."
He paused, watching her eyes as the puzzlement was replaced by understanding. "What do you suppose the dream means?" he asked.
"Tell me more about it, Jon," Almira asked softly.