The driver nodded, inching down on the accelerator. The vehicle leaped forward. At seventy miles an hour, they swooped past the spaceship and the knot of people standing in the shadow of the rudder stanchions.
"Hey. Slow up!" Claude yelled. "We're getting off here. We're booking return passage on that ship!"
Whiting didn't answer.
The low slung buildings of the clearance area leaped up at them and passed into the background. They were heading into open country now.
"Whiting! Turn around. We're staying here in the clearance area!"
Whiting's foot slacked off the accelerator. The speedometer dropped to fifty. But the vehicle kept moving into open country. The man at the wheel flicked a look at Claude and smiled.
"Congratulations, Mr. Marshall," he said. "You've passed the final test."
"Test? I don't understand."
"Let me explain then," Bruce Whiting said. "In the first place my name isn't Whiting.... It's Reed—Paul Reed. I work for the government. This final test—the one you just went through—was designed to weed out any undesirables who might have slipped through our screening processes back on Earth."
"You mean this whole build up was just a test?"