"We knew that someone high-up and undercover had furnished you with a spacecraft and a forged license and set you to running into us, hoping that your reputation would establish you as a racketeer. He used you efficiently, so we used you more efficiently. There are two ends to a fishline, Charles, and the fish and the fisherman never meet until one pulls the other in. We caught Howard Clevis on the wrong end of the line, so to speak. We also—"
"You caught Clevis?"
"As soon as we knew who your contact was we pulled him in. So if you are expecting a flight of military craft to come racing up in time to intercept the rendezvous ship we have out there, forget it. The military are still on the landing blocks at the spaceport."
Farradyne whirled and peered into the radar. The single pip was close and closing the range swiftly but there was nothing else on the "scope." It was a huge ship, if the size of the radar response meant anything and Farradyne peered into the coupled telescope.
Nothing like it could ever have been built in secret anywhere among the habitable planets of the solar system. The size of it was such that the metal alone, even if one piece were placed with each manufacturer to conceal the process, would have attracted notice, and the rest of the project would require the resources of a planet to feed it and the men that built it. It would be like trying to build a four-hundred-inch telescope in secret; the very least that could happen would be some avid press agent taking note of a massive casting and using it in an advertisement, and that would start the parade.
Farradyne turned away from the telescope. "Baby, what a sucker you played me for!" he jeered. "So I was to be your lover, your husband? Together, hand in hand we go to cement the first interstellar union. The mating of a jackass and a triple-tongued canary, that the fruit of such union will be half-assed and bird-brained." Farradyne's voice went hard. "Well, if it's war your people want, we'll give it to you!"
Farradyne strode across the room toward the controls and as he came, Carolyn's hand moved swiftly, catching up the microphone in a single swoop and bringing it to her mouth. She had had the radio turned on all the while, obviously, and Farradyne's tirade had been going out.
Carolyn cried a sing-songy rhythm into the mike. It reminded Farradyne of an exotic trio chanting a ritual celebration of some heathen rite of sacrifice.
He slapped the microphone out of her hand; the thing hurled out to the end of its cord and jerked free, to crash against the far wall leaving the cord-ends dangling open like a raw sore.
He caught her by the hair, lifted her out of the seat and hurled her across the room. She fell and went rolling in a welter of arms and legs until she came up against the wall beside the mike. She scooped it up and hurled it at Farradyne's head, but he caught it in one hand and dropped it to the floor.