"Skip it, Chav!" snapped Scott and he left the Control in peevish silence.
Sixty hours later Blue Three lay grounded in a jagged little valley on airless Hyperion. Spacesuited figures swarmed about the clustered ships transferring personnel from the Artemis to the other ships, and rigging special television, remote control, and other apparatus in the Artemis.
Hartnett stood beneath the Darkside's ventral valve on the metallic soil of the little moon with Chavez and Orsov watching the progress of the work. Lieutenant Morrow of the Lysander and Lieutenant Griggs of the Argus joined them and stood in silence while the last of the Artemis' personnel was transferred into the Darkside. Tom Drew, the commander of the Artemis stood sadly apart watching the spacemen make a ghost ship of his command.
On the eastern horizon, Saturn was rising into a black sky studded with points of fiery brilliance. Quickly the ringed planet climbed into the sky and flooded the tortured landscape of Hyperion with light. The men at the Darkside's valve stood watching the show of celestial grandeur in awe. Orsov, for all his deep-space experience, could not help but feel a twinge of vertigo as he looked up into the haloed face of the heavenly giant that filled a quarter of the inverted bowl of ebony that the heavens had become.
Everyone was relieved to lift ship, however, for the thought of being caught grounded by any roving Martian spaceship was not pleasant to contemplate. Atomic bombs had long been obsolete, but one such would certainly suffice to exterminate four grounded spacecraft. Then too, they were all glad to get away from the glaring spectre that so eerily filled too much of the sky ... the ringed Saturn had a hypnotic effect that left a man shaken.
In the Control of the Darkside Chavez whispered to Scott: "We were thinking that you were going to lose the Darky ... and it turns out that poor old Drew is the one who lost his command."
"He should be glad to get rid of it."
"But what," asked Chavez, "is the old man going to do with her?"
Scott shrugged and spoke succinctly. "Bait." His spirits had risen considerably when Hartnett had left him in command of the Darkside, contrary to his expectations. He reflected somewhat ruefully that it did a man good to have a scare thrown into him from time to time. Even now, rapidly approaching a quadrant heavy with Cat warships, he could feel contented in merely feeling his beloved tin can responding under his hands on the control panels.