The pilot decided to stall for another minute. He'd get another capsule and slip it to Andrews. Then he would hold Alice once more and keep her happy, thinking he was Ted.
"One moment more, honey," he breathed into her ear, then kissed it gently. "I've got to get you something."
"Hurry," she murmured.
Hurry? Yeah! Get it over with!
The trip across to the cabinet was longer this time, for the idea was still rubbing him the wrong way.
"Aw, hell!" he grunted, as he reached for the bottle again.
XI
As Commodore Theodore Wilson eyed the infrawave detector presentation on the dome of the detector ship, he groaned. The presentation of targets was stronger now. At the apex of the dome was the lifeship, its response waxing and waning, but always strong enough to stay visible even at its lowest ebb.
Some forty or fifty degrees down the hemisphere was the stronger response of the enemy warcraft, hanging motionless in the dome. The group of spacecraft that had come with it were dispersed in some complicated pattern. Most of these were lost in the tricky shift of the spurious lighting of the dome. Others had disappeared completely because they were out of range.