Larkwell warned against continuing their work.
"One misstep in lowering Red Dog and it'll shatter like an egg."
Crag realized he was right. Lowering the rocket in the bitter cold and blackness would be a superhuman job. Loss of the rocket would be disastrous. Against this was the necessity of obtaining shelter from the meteor falls. His determination was fortified by the discovery that a stray meteorite had smashed the nose of Drone Charlie. He decided to go on.
The cold seeped through their suits, chilled their bones, touched their arms and legs like a thousand pin pricks and lay like needles in their lungs until every movement was sheer agony. Yet their survival depended upon movement, hence every moment away from Bandit was filled with forced activity. But even the space cabin of Bandit was more like an outsized icebox than a place designed for human habitation. The rocket's insulated walls were ice to the touch, their breaths were frosty streams—sleep was possible only because of utter fatigue. At the end of each work shift the body simply rebelled against the task of retaining consciousness. Thus a few hours of merciful respite against the cold was obtained.
Crag assigned Prochaska the task of monitoring the radio despite his plea to share in the more arduous work. The knowledge that one of his crew was a saboteur lay constantly in his mind. He had risked leaving Prochaska alone before, he could risk it again, but he wasn't willing to risk leaving any of the others alone in Bandit. Yet, Prochaska hadn't found the bomb! Larkwell had worked superhumanly at the task of rebuilding the Aztec—Nagel had saved his life when he could just as easily have let him die. Neither seemed the work of a saboteur. Yet the cold fact remained—there was a saboteur!
Richter, too, preyed on his mind. The self-styled Eastern scientist was noncommittal, speaking only when spoken to. Yet he performed his assigned duties without hesitation. He had, in fact, made himself so useful that he almost seemed one of the crew. That, Crag told himself, was the danger. The tendency was to stop watching Richter, to trust him farther and farther. Was he planning, biding his time, preparing to strike? How? When? He wished he knew.
They toppled Red Dog in the dark of the moon.
Larkwell had run two cables to manually operated winches set about twenty-five yards from the rocket. A second line extended from each winch to the ravine. The ends of these were weighted with rocks. They served to anchor the winches during the lowering of the rocket. Finally a guide line ran from the nose of the rocket to a third winch. Richter and Nagel manned the lowering winches while Larkwell worked with the guide line, with only small hand torches to aid them. It was approximately the same setup used on the Aztec—they were getting good at it. Crag helped until the moment came to lower the rocket, then there was little for him to do. He contented himself with watching the operation, playing his torch over the scene as he felt it was needed.
It was an eery feeling. The rocket was a black monster bathed in the puny yellow rays of their hand torches. The pale light gave the illusion of movement until the rocket, the rocks, and the very floor of the crater seemed to writhe and squirm, playing tricks on the eyes. It was, he knew, a dangerous moment, one ripe for a saboteur to strike—or ripe for Richter.