Farradyne looked above. Circling there were skytrails of jet bombers making loops in the sky. There came another flash of the searchbeam against the antenna.
Ping! Abruptly the pinging changed in tone. It became frequency modulated so that it rose in a chirp, and Farradyne knew that the submarine was coming closer.
Norma! Get through, wherever you are!
Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook the ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake water oozed through the ceiling of the astrodome.
The pinging came louder.
Underwater bursts ricocheted and flashed and hurled their gusts of force against the spacer, buffeting the Lancaster.
Farradyne's hands hung above his controls. He could escape this holocaust; all he had to do was to blast free from the water, make a brief run for it, and then come down hard on the enemy ultradrive toggle-bar and his Lancaster would virtually disappear right under the guns of the squadrons that sought him. He could hide in space for a day or a week and return after Norma explained.
But this was wrong. To be sure he had the enemy equipment in his hold and enemy agents in his salon who could explain the science behind the device. Eventually it could be reproduced—but only if there were time.
For Farradyne realized that his act had been the first overt move that could start the First Interstellar War—but the enemy would not permit Sol to take the second move. Once their secret was out the starships would hover over Sol's planets with their loads of mercurite and it would be slavery or death. He would land to find a ruined Sol and a few remnants of humankind reduced to savagery. The only result would be the locating of a mercurite stockpile and a blow of retaliation.
And then someday, another sentience would come to visit the stars and find only the smouldering ruins of two systems that could neither live with each other nor permit each other to have supremacy.