"Morgan. This is Roberts."
"Morgan, you drive that truck into the ravine there and I'll see that Roberts plays hostage. Get it?"
"Behave, Al," pleaded Roberts.
"I will, but I think we'll get it anyway."
"Act like you believe that and you will," snapped Farradyne. "I have neither time nor patience."
Morgan climbed into the truck and drove it from the road through the trees until they came to the Lancaster. Both men goggled at the big ship parked there and Farradyne let them look at it for a moment. Then he waved his gun. "Unload it!" he said sharply.
It took them an hour to move the load from the truck to the ground, and Farradyne spent that hour in nervous watching. He could not trust them not to make a break, nor could he hope to explain. When the van was emptied, he faced Roberts against it and said, "Norma, tape Morgan's hands behind him."
She did, and while Farradyne stood over them, she taped Roberts. Each man knew that the other's life was dependent on him and, while either man might have made some break for safety, he would not so long as the other might suffer.
Their lips curled in contempt as the conveyor-belt came out of the cargo lock and the white blossoms tumbled along it to drop into the van. Both Morgan and Roberts were honest men, but they lacked the higher education that was necessary to be pilot of a spacecraft; therefore, they resented the fact that Farradyne had this training yet used it to such ends. They were rough-hewn and hard-boiled and, perhaps like other transcontinental truckers, they had a woman at either end of the line and a few strung along the way, but their love conquests were lustily honest and they scorned the idea of hellflowers as an aid to passion. Even in their fright they sneered at the spaceman.
Farradyne left them sitting there on the ground after the loading was finished. He and Norma went into the salon and he faced Brenner. "Better take this quietly," he said. "It's inevitable, Brenner."