"Eleven-oh-three-ack-em."
"Hmmm! They should arrive in less than six hours. We must get to work. All right, Chief. You know where I want those materials. And don't forget the salt!"
"No, sorrr!"
"Salt!" moaned Hanson. "Migawd, what now? You ain't goin' to cook and eat Steichner?"
Lancelot Biggs smiled tightly.
"No, not entirely. All I'm going to cook is his goose."
What happened in those next few hours makes sense to me now, but it didn't while it was going on. I'll admit that without a tremor. But, then, few ordinary mortals do understand what L. Biggs is driving at until he pops up at the end of his endeavors with a Q. E. D. clenched in his molars.
All I knew was, that by the time our gang got from the camp down to the capital city, Steichner and his crowd had disappeared. The city was empty save for a few assorted thousand fuzzy Irisians scampering around, whimpering dolefully because they didn't know what was going on.
Otto and his mobile units had taken a run-out powder. But, as Biggs had hunched it, they hadn't gone far. Just into their spaceships which lay a few yards below the placid surface of the artificial lake beside the governor's mansion.