Hastily I spun the dial to the wave length of the station at Verlis, called their letters. The voice of the operator there answered me.
"CQR, Verlis, Ceres," he snapped. "Go ahead!"
"Stephen McClean, of Cerean Mining," I whispered, bending low over the mike. "My uncle, John Gibson, is in Verlis. He'll be either at the hotel or the space-port, making arrangements for the transport of his palladium to earth. Send someone to find him at once! It's vital! Tell him" ... I hesitated a moment, wondering whether to mention the robbery and bring in the I.P. patrolmen. But it might be possible to stop my father's evil work without disgracing our name ... "tell him," I went on, "that Vance McClean is here, that he'd better round up a few men and return as quickly as possible! Got it? As quickly as possible! It's urgent!"
"Right." The Verlis operator replied. "Checking back!" He repeated my message to me.
"Okay," I exclaimed. "Hurry!"
"Anything wrong?" the operator asked.
"Only a ... family affair," I said, and snapped off the set.
The message sent, my nerves lost some of their tension. Uncle John had gone to Verlis in his big rocket-sled. With its exhausts opened full, the sled could race over the icy plain well in excess of a hundred miles an hour. And since Verlis was only a short distance away he could reach the mine, with luck, in thirty minutes.
I glanced through the big observation port of the control room. The window of the administration building was still lit by the white-hot glare of the oxy-hydrogen torch. An hour was necessary to cut through the steel doors of the safe, Taon had said. But the hour must be nearly up. I had to make sure that they didn't get away before Uncle John arrived. But how? At that moment my glance fell on the intricate control panel. If that were smashed....
My eyes swept the crowded control room, fell upon a heavy metal stool, drawn up at the navigator's table. I seized it, swung it high above my head. Thrown into the panel, it was sure to wreck the array of delicate instruments. And with them smashed, the ship would be grounded here indefinitely. My muscles tensed as I prepared to heave the stool into the fragile mass of wire and glass tubing. Another moment and....