"Any contact yet?"
"Not yet...."
Two different voices—there were at least two men in the room. How many more? But he couldn't risk waiting to find out. Any moment somebody might appear on the shaft. He threw open the door and stepped in quickly, ready to tear his way to that video transmitter.
The room was dark, with only a small light in one corner, the glow of a video screen. In front of it were silhouetted two heads. One had close-cropped hair; the other wore a skull cap. Chairs pulled up close to the video, they were so engrossed in their work they didn't even turn around.
"Shhh!" said the black skull cap.
"We're about to make contact, Mike," said the short haircut.
Steel stood motionless in the darkness. They thought he was Mike, the boxer! And there were only two men in the room. Marvelous! Just walk up behind them and bang their heads together. He stepped silently forward.
He was within arm's reach of the two shadowed figures when the video screen's light suddenly flared. He halted.
"Here she is!" The skull cap bent low over the panel under the screen. Dim-lit hands played the video's controls like a piano.
Slowly fading in on the screen, Steel saw the familiar green sphere that was Venus. The picture was swelling in from a video camera on a space ship somewhere close in the Venusian sector. The picture was closing up, each ice peak gleaming. Behind the planet was a blurred background of white lines—he couldn't figure out what they were. And they certainly didn't matter now. His hands started out for those two necks in front of him.