Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in the lower hold are probably exposed to a tholpane plate and their radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore. Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single move."
Outside the day was beginning to wane. The Venusians, apparently unawed by the presence of the space ship, had already started a fire and erected the tents. We left the vessel to find a spell of brooding desolation heavy over the improvised camp. And the evening meal this time was a gloomy affair. When it was finished, Ezra Karn lit his pipe and switched on the portable visi set. A moment later the silence of the march was broken by the opening fanfare of the Doctor Universe program.
"Great stuff," Karn commented. "I sent in a couple of questions once, but I never did win nothin'. This Doctor Universe is a great guy. Ought to make him king or somethin'."