I went back to my ship and sat behind the control board, smoking a cigarette. I rubbed a hand across my tired eyes, and wondered what I was going to do next.
Thorsten had thought of everything. He couldn't have found technicians to assemble the drive anywhere else, so he'd come out here and kidnapped them. That was an elementary move, obviously planned far in advance.
I'd been running a useless race. I would have realized it long ago, if I hadn't been half-crazy about Pat.
She laughed at me when I told her about it, but she laughed in a peculiar way.
"I could have told you," she said, laughing. "Ash Holcomb, the big undercover agent, heading like mad for Titan! And what does he find?"
"I found Lou Foster, Pat," I said, feeling the steel in my voice slicing upward in my throat.
"That wasn't anybody's fault!" she said quickly. "He happened to get in Harry's way."
"Go tell Andrea Foster," I said.
"Stop it, Ash! You can keep bringing up horrible examples, but it still doesn't mean anything, compared to travel to the stars."
"What was wrong with the way it was going to be done?" I asked.