"Captain Carse! Captain Carse! Wake up, sir!"
It was one of Leithgow's assistants, a man named Thorpe. His tone was excited and his manner distraught.
"Yes?" the Hawk muttered thickly. "What is it?"
"It's the asteroid, sir! I was instructed to watch it at intervals, but I—I guess I fell asleep, and just now—"
Carse sat up. "Yes? What?"
"—when I looked, through the glasses—it was gone!"
"Gone? You're sure? Let me see."
Swiftly, Thorpe at his heels, Carse strode out from the room to a cubby just off the laboratory, the watch-post, where observational electelscopes and visi-screens provided a panorama of the surrounding territory.
He gazed through the electelscope, which had been equipped with an infra-red device and trained on the asteroid, and saw that now, where the massive body of rock had been poised, there was nothing. Only the brilliant light of mid-afternoon, the cloudless sky. Carse swept the glass around. The search was fruitless. The heavens were bare. The asteroid had gone.
In half a minute Carse had reasoned out the disappearance, saw the consequences and made the inevitable decision. Gone was the torpor of sleep, the weariness of the laboratory; this was a crisis, and this was his work. During the operations, he had been able merely to obey orders and do manual work. Now he assumed command.