Syd nodded.
"I see. But we couldn't walk into the garrison and hand them a line about a "mine" of ekalastron. They'd shove us into the nearest looney-bin. And I wouldn't blame them a bit. If I didn't know Chip Warren like I know my own lovely pan—but suppose we meet Amborg?"
"'The Lord,'" said Salvation, "'is my strength and my salvation. In His hands do I place my guidance.'" His lean hands flexed powerfully. "We destroy them," he said gently, "like the rats they are...."
Thus four days sped by in plan and conjecture. And on the fifth day Syd Palmer cut the velocity-intensifiers to normal, and a scant thousand miles beneath them, so accurate had been Chip's astrogation, gleamed the silvery mote which was Titania, second child of the mother planet, Uranus.
"Well done, my son!" approved Salvation. "The best landcast I've ever seen!"
Palmer was less exuberant. He stared at Titania, scratched his yellow crest morbidly.
"A damn snowball!" he mourned. "A damned snowball, eight hundred miles in diameter! Sweet crimes of Beelzebub, Chip, how do you ever expect to find a pinpoint of a mine on that huge hunk of ice? It will take us ages!"
"We'll cruise at low elevation," said Chip, "until we see something. There must be a dark spot showing against that sheen of white somewhere. Jenkins spoke of caverns and natives and flame. We have plenty of supplies—look out!"
He leaped even as he shouted. Leaped to the panels and jammed the full strength of his six foot plus frame to a deflecting lever. The control room of the Chickadee whirled giddily as the little ship spun into a crazy spiral; Palmer yelped, skidding helplessly across the floor. Salvation let loose a roar and clung ardently to a stanchion, his silvery locks whipping straight out from his head with the force of the drive.
Chip threw himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's-chair, gained possession of the controls. An instant later, the Chickadee was tossing through the maddest gyrations Chip could devise. Fore, loft and jet, with hypos throbbing, the little craft was blasting, shaking, quivering like a leaf in a cyclone.