Herl grabbed for her bare shoulders where they shone a mere yard in front of him. "You're not going back without me!" he stormed but she was quite gone before the sentence was complete, leaving him in the utter darkness of an unillumined cabin.
He found the back of the chair, seated himself, touched the light switch. He was indeed alone in the cabin. The heavy cases sat smug on the motionless table. He felt numb, aware only of an unwillingness to move and of the futility of trying to get back to the city if he was only to find himself back in the Krylla if he did. "Damned interfering female," he muttered disgustedly, "I'll show her!" All he had to do, she'd said, was blast off. Why not?
He switched on the phone, still set for the control tower.
"Class M ship Krylla on the field, calling control tower," he articulated crisply.
There was no response.
"Class M Ship," he repeated impatiently, "calling control tower. Come in tower!"
There was no carrier hum from his receiver. The thing seemed dead. He activated the viewscreen above the instrument panel and adjusted the angle for a full sight of the tower.
The tower was there, all right, a black hulk against the slightly luminous night sky, unlighted, solid, a mere chunk of construction.
"Hanh! Power's off, of course," Herl said aloud. Well, that meant nobody else would try to land here, so takeoff should be safe if he wanted to do his own manipulating out of the atmosphere.
But he'd have to leave some sort of message for Crawford, he realized. He swivelled the chair and regarded the cases of film and wire blankly. His job was coordination, not dashing off on a mad into space. He calculated quickly ... twenty-two, twenty-three hours till daylight; then maybe another ten hours or so till the power was restored and he could talk to Crawford ... if Crawford would talk to him ... if Crawford still had any power to negotiate extra-planetary purchases. And if Crawford didn't, he, Herl, would have to wait around till somebody did have the authority. Wait, wait, wait!