It sounded a little faster now.
Tick-tick-tick-tick!
The ticking swelled to a roar and then subsided to a gentle, purring tick ... tick ... tick!
He crouched there in the dark, straining for the sound, wondering what it was. It almost sounded like a slow-motion tabulator....
The geiger counter!
His heart skipped and a cold sweat broke out on his skin. There was a counter on board to warn against stray radiation. Not that there would be any—the Cameron-Smith energy converters were shielded so thoroughly that not even a single stray particle could get through.
They were supposed to be, that is. Was it possible that the engineers could have slipped up?
Pictures of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hideous with radiation keloids, flashed into his mind. A news story about radiation poisoning gibbered in the back of his imagination.
Tick-tick-tick-tick!
Sterility....