"There's a notebook in the cruiser, Mr. Norman," Dorothy said. "I heard the fat one talking about it. They've found something here and the notebook tells all about it."
"So it's all written down for me," Norman laughed. "Watch 'em, Dorothy. If they get fidgety, call me." He entered the snug, well-remembered cabin. Keren's hypo must have been pretty weak. He still felt nothing.
He frowned, puzzled to see a narrow tank built around the cushioned wall. Pushing aside the space units—life preservers—hanging on their customary hooks, he rapped the tank with his knuckles. It was heavily insulated, a liquid of some sort sloshing inside. Shaking his head, he went on into the pilot room where his eyes immediately fell on a small black notebook lying on the control panel. He picked it up eagerly.
"Complete life cycle accelerated," he read on with an eerie thrill. Then, abruptly universal scientific language. "One year equals approximately twenty minutes...." Remembering the quick growing grass, he read on with amazement. Then, abruptly the page became a cross-word puzzle of chemical symbols—it would take time to figure them out—
"I don't want to stay out there, Mr. Norman," a voice interrupted him. It was Dorothy standing in the door. "They're saying such bad words."
Norman grinned. "Point your gun at 'em to hush," he said. She grinned back, wrinkling her freckled nose and went outside again as he returned to his perusal of the symbols.
They were a description of the elements in something, in a very unusual combination. Then slowly his eyes raised from the notebook again. Something deep in the shadows of his mind was trying to speak—not about the symbols—about something else. Something he had done? Something he had seen? Anyhow, Norman had been in enough bad spots to pay attention when that ghostly feeling sounded its alarm.
Closing the notebook, he stepped across the pilot room and walked into the cabin, into a pistol's point blank explosion.
The burst of flame seared Norman's left side. In the same second, as his hand came up to grab the gun, he realized the impossibility of getting it in time. Swart was too close. His hand dropped to his blistered side. Swart had him between death and surrender.