As the lights glowed on the board, the young Watcher forgot discipline, even forgot the inter-office video. Stumbling into the captain's office, he shouted,
"It's Commander Ool. He's requesting permission to land—" he gulped, came to attention, "sir."
The captain was equally startled. But years of training helped him to keep control.
"Wonder where he's been all this time. No report from him in weeks. Permission granted. And tell him to report up here at once. The Old Men will want to hear about this. I wouldn't want to be in his boots."
"If I'd been gone this long I wouldn't have bothered to come back," the Watcher said.
"They'd have found him sooner or later. He couldn't stay up forever," the captain said. "Better get those signals out." And the young Watcher went back to his post, shaking his head over anyone foolish enough to anger the Old Men, while the captain put through a call to Committee headquarters.
Between the frequent tests and long periods of questioning, Ool was also wondering where he had been. Two weeks gone out of his life without the slightest glimmer of a memory about them. Two weeks of floating in space. Had Loris been dead all the time? Or had she died while he lay unconscious? Had he—could he have killed her without knowing it?
Furiously Ool tried to assemble his thoughts, to force his tired brain back over all that had happened, trying to find some explanation.
He could remember perfectly except for the last two weeks. The Invasion—which had threatened to wipe out Civilization. When, in the last desperate moments, the untested Gilkite rays had been used, and like an invisible screen, had held off the foe. How he alone had stood for hours at the machines, after Gilk, the froglike Martian inventor had run from the scene, howling with terror.