Farradyne waved and went into the spaceport. He was walking on wobbly legs, because he did not know whether the guard would suddenly begin to suspect him and let fly. But as he passed beyond range around the fantail of a big spacer he relaxed once more.
Farradyne walked slowly out across the field, feeling let down. He had learned nothing from the day's wandering, but while he dawdled all over town, Norma Hannon and Howard Clevis had been within a shout of his Lancaster. Not that he could have done anything, but just being able to talk it over might have brought something out of meeting up with them.
Night was slow in coming, but Farradyne loafed along on his mile and a half walk through the tails of the parked spacecraft until darkness was well on its way.
Two things he noted:
The work-crew around the Lancaster were polishing off the last bits and some of the trucks were folding down their ladders and preparing to take off for home. The other item was the position of the lonely lighted porthole in the big starship. It had changed. To Farradyne this meant only one thing. Clevis had been in one stateroom from early that morning or late last night, but Norma had been missing. Now Norma was back to her own stateroom and Clevis was off, possibly being questioned.
Could he—should he—? Questions raced through his mind. And if he did, would Norma be able to tell him anything? He had his own plans; to hide back in his Lancaster and wait out developments. At least long enough to throw a hard hammerlock on whatever pilot came to drive the Lanc' and twist information out of him.
Norma, he thought then, might know one thing: Their location. It would be a help to know. For if push came to shove, Farradyne was going to enter the Lancaster and take her up and then he was going to experiment with that auxiliary drive. He might die, but he was going to try the thing as soon as he knew that he could never find out without taking the long gamble.
One of the work trucks made up his mind for him. It turned from the Lancaster and its headlamps cut a swath across the field, swinging toward Farradyne. It took Farradyne less than the proverbial half a jiffy to come to the conclusion that bamboozling a guard at the gate was one thing, but to be found slinking around either near the Lancaster or the big starship was something else again.
He avoided the lights of the truck by scooting up the landing ramp of the starship and into the spacelock. It occurred to Farradyne as he went that the lack of people, including guards, out in this region of the spacefield was in a way its own protection. Any distant watcher seeing a figure out here would know automatically that the person was an intruder; perhaps the only reason Farradyne had not been hailed down was due to the known presence of workmen.
Farradyne lay with his chin on the sill of the spacelock and peered out as the truck went by. It would be some time before they were all finished, he concluded, and so he decided to kill the time in action.