The astounded Englishman continued gazing at Anita. "I mean to say, where to on the Moon? Not to encounter Grantline at once, Miko? Our equipment is not ready."
"Of course not. We will land well away. He won't be suspicious—we can signal him again after we land. We will have time to plan, to assemble the equipment. Get below, I told you."
The reluctant Coniston left us. I took the controls. Miko, still holding Anita as though she were a child, sat beside me. "We will watch him, little Anita. A skilled fellow at this sort of work."
I rang my signals for the shifting of the gravity plates. The answer should have come from below within a second or two. But it did not. Miko regarded me with his great bushy eyebrows upraised.
"Ring again, Haljan."
I duplicated. No answer. The silence was frightening. Ominous.
Miko muttered, "That accursed Hahn. Ring again!"
I sent the imperative emergency demand.
No answer. A second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled. Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret: it came from shifting-room call-grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves of the plate-shifters in the lower control room. The valves were opening; the plates automatically shifting into neutral, and disconnecting!