"I can see them now," he whispered. "Big cruisers, done over with the new radiotron drive, whisking across the gulfs as though they were nothing. The Thallin Starways will blaze an eternal trail across interplanetary space. Dad would have liked it that way."
Dr. Haliburton sighed. "If only you'd think more of science, and not of—"
Rufus Thallin was no longer listening. He had whirled around and was peering into the indigo blackness of the cavern from which they had come.
"My nerves," he said at length. "I guess I'm jumpy. Let's go in now. I want a talk with Keith Randolph Marshall."
He waited for the slighter figure of the doctor to enter the airlock, waited until the inner sigh of atmosphere told he was inside. All of the while, Rufus stood tense, peering into a blackness that was so thick it was like a cushion. Then he, too, went through the airlock.
His metal arms moved swiftly, unfastening the middle of his space togging. Keith Randolph Marshall was signing a bunch of papers against a berylumin strut.
"Here," he grunted, screwing up his fountain pen and returning it to his coat pocket, "They're yours, every space scuttler! The Marshall lines are yours, lock, stock and barrel."
"I told you father would keep his bargain," said Alyce Marshall, clinging to the arm of the erstwhile dictator of the spacelanes. "I only hope he never regrets it."
"He won't," said Rufus drily. "He won't, because I'll never get hold of them."
Another helmet fastening came loose and the slender upper body of Dr. Haliburton appeared. He adjusted his glasses hurriedly and glared at Rufus Thallin. A strange smile of triumph lingered on the heavy lips of Keith Randolph Marshall.