Connel nodded. "I'll take care of it." He shook hands all around, coming to Sykes last. "Sorry I lost my temper, Professor," he said gruffly.
"Forget it, Major." Sykes smiled. He really admired the gruff spaceman.
The thick-set senior officer came to smart attention, saluted crisply, turned, and left the office. For the time being, the mysterious trouble on Venus was his responsibility.
"Atom City express leaving on Track Four!"
A metallic voice boomed over the station loud-speaker, as last-minute passengers boarded the long line of gleaming white monorail cars, hanging from a single overhead steel rail. In the open doorway of one of the end cars, a conductor lifted his arm, then paused and waited patiently as three Space Cadets raced down the stairs and along the platform in a headlong dash for the train. They piled inside, almost one on top of the other.
"Thanks for waiting, sir," gasped Tom Corbett.
"Not at all, Cadet," said the conductor. "I couldn't let you waste your leave waiting for another train."
The elderly man flipped a switch in the narrow vestibule and the door closed with a soft hiss of air. He inserted a light key into a near-by socket and twisted it gently, completing a circuit that flashed the "go" light in the engineer's cab. Almost immediately, the monorail train eased forward, suspended on the overhead rail. By the time the last building of Space Academy flashed past, the train was rolling along at full speed on its dash across the plains to Atom City.
The ride to the great metropolis of the North American continent was filled with excitement and anticipation for the three members of the Polaris crew. The cars were crowded with cadets on leave, and while there was a lot of joking and horseplay, the few civilian passengers were impressed with the gentlemanly bearing of the young spacemen. Tom and Roger finally settled down to read the latest magazines supplied by the monorail company. But Astro headed for the dining car where he attracted a great deal of attention by his order of a dozen eggs, followed by two orders of waffles and a full quart of milk. Finally, when the dining-car steward called a halt, because it was closing time, Astro made his way back to Tom and Roger with a plastic bag of French fried potatoes, and the three boys sat, munching them happily. The countryside flashed by in a blur of summer color as the train roared on at a speed of two hundred miles an hour.