Mart hastily pulled on his other boot and ran down the stairs. A red-headed mechanic from the rocketport was coming out of the building across the way.
Mart called out, "Red! Something about a mile back in the hills looks like a spaceship. Has one been reported down?"
"Huh?" The mechanic looked startled. "You sure? No, there hasn't been a report. Wait, I'll radio Central Communications."
He darted back into the building, and emerged a moment later. "No report. They're going to send out the autogiro to look at it. Say, Mart, there are only two small spaceships on Callisto. Could it be—"
Mart was already running toward the corner from which he could see the landing field. He stopped so suddenly that the mechanic almost ran into him, and said, "Whew! They're both there." Leah Barrow's trim little spacecruiser was safe in port. So was the Police one-seater scout—but that wasn't the one Mart had looked for first.
From near the Administration Building a two-place autogiro was rising, silhouetted for a moment between the horns of the reddish crescent of big Jupiter just above the horizon.
As he walked across the field toward headquarters, Mart surveyed the familiar scene. Three squat freighters were up on the racks, their ugly black bottoms over the ash-filled blasting pits; four others were on dollies ready to be serviced.
All seven were ready for their regular weekly Callisto-Jupe hop, ready to pick up more ore. And, as usual, they'd go out today to clear the field for the sleeker, faster, long-haul ships that would arrive from Earth tomorrow for the smelted metal. Mart glanced at his wrist-chronometer. Eight o'clock now; in an hour and a half, Freighter One, right on schedule, would start testing its rocket tubes for the ten o'clock hop. And an hour later, Freighter Two would start to warm up for the eleven o'clock blasting-off. And then the others, every hour on the hour.
At his desk in the Administration Building, Mart picked up the familiar sheaf of clearance papers waiting for his attention, and glanced through them. Initialing them was mere routine; they'd never cleared a minute early or a minute late since he'd been there. Director Barrow saw to that.
The door opened. Mart put down the papers and glanced up.