Channing's men took over the poised driver tube, and in their own ship, Walt spoke over a sub-ether radio of a different type.
"Don, we got him."
Don answered from Venus Equilateral, and his voice had no more delay than if he had been within a hundred yards of the crater on Luna.
"Good. Stay where you are; you can contact the Lunar Relay Station from there. Wes is all ready on Station 3 above Northern Landing with his set, and Jim Baler is at the Deimos station."
"Hi, Walt," came Wes' voice.
"Hi," said Jim Baler.
"Hello, fellows," said Walt. "Well, what cooks?"
"Kingman," said Channing, with a tone of finality. "You've got your orders, Walt. When Kingman expects the market to go down, tell him it's still going up. We'll figure this out as we go along, but he won't like it at all."
There was silence for a few minutes, and then Don said: "Walt, Kingman's sent a message through to Northern Landing Station now. He says: 'Dump a block to shake the suckers loose. This is pyramided so high that they should all climb on the sell-wagon; running the market down of their own weight. When it hits a new low, we'll buy, and this time end up by having control.' When he starts to run the market down, you buy at Terra."
Minutes later, the message hit the Terra market, and Kingman's agent started to unload. The stock started off at six hundred and nine, and it soon dropped to five-forty. It hovered there, and then took another gradual slide to four-seventy. Then a message came through the regular beam station which Walt intercepted, decoded with Terran Electric's own code book, and read as follows: