Dusty turned to the pilot. "When we get there," he said, "Circle the planet several times as fast and as low as you can. Create a stir. Radiate like mad, anything you can radiate. Call attention to us in a bold fashion and show 'em that what we've got is big, important and powerful." Then to Gant Nerley he put the question, "You wouldn't have anything as primitive as a radio set aboard, would you?"
"You mean a radiomagnetic communication device? Well, not for communications but we do have a small receiver for detecting the lower-radiation stars and one for scanning planetary systems for primitive cultures. What did you have in mind?"
Dusty looked Gant in the eye. "I want to broadcast orders to my Patrol."
"Oh. An excellent idea. We'll save time that way. The scanner-type radiomagnetic wave equipment is two-way and connected to a menslator for contacting primitive peoples, you know, and—"
"Get it fired up," said Dusty shortly. "Full power."
The screech of air came first as a thin whistle, and then thundered and slammed down at Earth below as the thirteen Marandanian spacecraft were inched lower and lower into the complaining atmosphere. The howling racket dinned into the ears of Russian and Chinese and Hawaiian and Californian and New Yorker and Briton and Frenchman and Indian and Malayan and Indonesian and Argentinian and South African and Australian and Mexican and Floridian. Around it went, across the land and the sea, a thunder blast of rent air that piled shock wave on shock wave and sent them tearing down at the ground below. The thunder cracked windows and made plaster sift down from ceilings. It dinned down a tree or two, and it hurled some people to the ground. It flipped a parked fleet of jetplanes over in crumpled ruin like a windstorm hitting a deck of cards.
Across the world, radar operators looked blankly at the signal pips that raced across their screens and began to make apologetic reports. Interceptors tried to rise, but were tossed madly in the racing shock-stream to lose ground and return to earth limping.
But in the lead spacecraft of this mad fleet, the barytrine operator watched his detector hopefully. The entire screen was aglow, but he watched it and finally said, "I think it's down there somewhere."
He pointed to a region in Indiana not far from the lower tip of Lake Michigan.