Even as Lar Tantril spoke, a giant shape was passing clumsily through the kitchen of his house. Carse had entered from the rear, unseen. With gun in hand and eyes sharp he crossed the deserted kitchen with its foul odors of Venusian cookery. Quickly, his metal-shod feet creating an unavoidable racket, he was through a connecting door and into the well-furnished dining room. All was brightly lit; he could easily have been seen through the window-ports rimming each wall; but he counted on the confusion outside to keep the Venusians engaged for several minutes more.
Then he went shuffling into the front room of the house, and saw at once the most likely place.
It was in one corner—a large flat desk, and by it the broad panel of a radio. Scattered over the desk were a number of papers. In seconds Carse was bending over them, scanning and discarding with eyes and hands.
Reports of various quantities of isuan ... orders for stores ... a list that seemed an inventory of weapons—and then the top page of a sheaf covered with familiar, neat, small writing. Yes!
Plans and calculations dealing with a laboratory! And, down in the margin of the first page, the revealing, all-important figure—5,576.34!
He had them—and before Ku Sui! Now, only to get away; out the front door, and up—up from this trap he was in—up into clean and empty space, and then to Leithgow and Friday at Ban Wilson's!
But, as the Hawk turned to go, his eye took in a little slip on the desk, a radio memo, with the name of Ku Sui at its top. Almost without volition he glanced over it, hoping to discover useful information about Ku Sui's asteroid—and with the passing of those few extra seconds his chance for escaping out the door passed too.
Carse's back was partly toward the front door when a voice, hard and deadly, spoke from it:
"Your hands up!"