But Tar Norn must have planned it all before he left the wrecked ship. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken the timer and—
Would he have rigged the time-bomb first, or after he had kidnapped Leah? And how? The timer itself would not have provided the concussion to set off the uranite. He'd have needed a battery, a spark-coil, and—
But Venusians weren't mechanics.
They didn't understand machines, or electricity, or even simple clockworks, brilliant as their strange minds were in other ways.
Tar Norn could have set the timer all right. For that matter, he could calculate an orbit and make settings for space flight. But he couldn't have made a time-bomb, even with the timer. He couldn't have rigged a circuit that would set off a cap! And, Mart realized suddenly, the timer itself would be an electrical—not a clockwork—gadget. Once disconnected from the now broken dynamo of the ship, Tar Norn couldn't have made it run at all!
A momentary surge of elation swept Mart. Tar Norn must have been bluffing! Then he remembered: a Venusian might murder his own family, but he would never swear to an untruth by the Eternal Varga. That one superstition, or religion, as they looked upon it, was binding beyond all else. And Tar Norn had sworn by that oath that Leah Barrows would die at nine-thirty unless—
Mart looked at the chronometer. It was twenty-six minutes past nine. He caught a glimpse of Director Barrow's face. It looked like the face of a dead man. Barrow had obviously given up all hope and waited only for the four minutes to pass.
The carrier wave hummed. All of them started, but the voice from the communicator merely reported, "All Comprotown reports in. All negative. Giros report nothing. Foot parties five miles out. Reports negative."
Three minutes to go. Mart could see by the attitude of the others that they were bracing themselves for the sound of an explosion. All of them had liked, or loved, Leah Barrows. Mart had a momentary vision of her again, and remembered the electric thrill that had run through him when she had placed her hand on his arm, just a few days ago, and told him that she did care for him, well, a little anyway—
But, if Tar Norn couldn't have rigged a time-bomb, how could he have arranged for Leah to die at nine-thirty?