He tripped over Tayne's body, fell heavily against the communications panel. His fingers fumbled for a switch near the inset microphone. The words blurred.... FIELD ADDRESS. RADIO-SEND. RADIO-REC. FLEET INTERCOM.
He twisted the knob to RADIO-REC. and the blue light stopped blinking.
"... D to QT, D to QT, over...."
He turned the dial to RADIO-SEND.
"This is QT," he said. He switched back, waited.
"Larsen, this is Gundar! What in Napoleon's name are you doing? What did you do with Blair?"
Doug tore a plastisheet leaf from Tayne's note tablet, thrust it over the mike-face.
"I had to kill him."
"Kill him? Larsen you fool.... You know what they'll say—"
"He tried to get at the manual controls ... succeeded in wrecking the autorobot, so I had to use them. And I had to kill him when he tried to take over by force. Give you a—"