That night they listened to a late newscast before going to bed. The situation was tense. The presidents' meeting had been postponed until after the inspection of the moon laboratories by the South American officials. There was talk of a general mobilization and a tightening of discipline at the military stations along the Mexican border and the gulf coast.
Five hundred miles above the Earth, the polar weather station wheeled silently through space. A sphere two hundred feet in diameter, it was girded by a ring deck that was home to forty men and women. The big observation room was the real reason for the space station's existence. Here, the weathermen kept watch over the movements of Earth's atmosphere. The fluffy white clouds that appeared on their screens told a tale of mass air movements that meant stormy or clear weather for the Earth below. An almost blinding white mass of cloud over Canada told of a cold front moving southward to collide with warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and unleash a blizzard over the plains of the Midwest. Tumbling clouds hid a storm that whipped the North Atlantic into a raging fury of white water. Clear areas showed where snow sparked under the winter sun or where soft tropical breezes ruffled the fronds of palm trees.
The station was passing over the Pampas of Argentina on the day side of Earth when the incident occurred. Miriam Andrews, on duty at the time, sat watching the progress of a small rain squall. Suddenly a look of surprise crossed her rather plain features, and she turned the amplifier gain-knob of the light amplifying telescope to higher magnification. On the screen appeared a sprawling airport on which lay scores of large, box-like transport planes. Into the huge, channel winged craft flowed lines of robot controlled armored vehicles. Miriam, who had a keen mind and an interest in international affairs, recognized the dangerous possibilities of these preparations. She did not hesitate to call the station director. That individual was summoned from a deep sleep by the imperative buzzing of the intercom. He switched the instrument on, saw Miriam's excited face, and came fully awake with a feeling of alarm. Excitement on the part of station personnel was apt to mean deadly danger. He interrupted the excited girl. "Repeat that again and slow down." Miriam repeated her story.
"I'll send a message when we get close enough to Chicago to use a tight beam," he said. "There's no use spreading that news all over the western hemisphere." With that he broke the connection and called the radio room to give instructions about the message.
The station swept around the Earth untroubled by the gathering fury below. A rocket, a slender, blue steel, winged cone, blasted away from the station with a brief but brilliant display of its atomic jets. The watches changed, and the weathermen continued to receive data, analyze it, and send it to the coordinating centers on Earth.
Although most of the men on the station heard the news with the detachment of those whose main interest lies in space and on the moon, the North American government was not so calm. It was not long before big formations of box-like transports were headed southward with heavy loads of flying armored equipment, technicians, and troops. Flights of dart like interceptors patrolled the gulf area, ranging the blue skies at supersonic speeds. On the ground, rows of slim antiaircraft missiles stood like candles in a birthday cake. At the first flicker on a radar screen, they would scream skyward to intercept hydrogen and atom armed missiles at the borderline of space. Both powers made good resolutions of nonaggression, but the rest of the world watched the preparations with a skeptical eye. The weapons that could unleash the horrors of nuclear warfare at the flick of a switch stood in frightening array on both sides of the gulf.
Meanwhile, the police prepared to close in on the mountain cabin. Equipped with gas bombs, machine pistols and recoiless rifles, they came struggling through a snow clogged pass and down the mountain sides from hovering planes. Unseen in the darkness, they crept through the woods toward the house. A rifle shot cracked as a guard sighted them with his sniperscope. One of the policemen fell, a bullet in his leg. The lights in the house went out, and gun flashes lanced through the windows. Bullets, hunting their prey like angry wasps, snarled through the darkness.
Roger was locked in an upstairs bedroom with a guard before the door. During the next two hours, the roar of machine pistols and the crack of rifle fire split the mountain stillness and echoed from the hillsides. At the end of that time, the police withdrew to rearrange their strategy.