"You're wondering why I'm falling in so quickly with your plan to wreck the control center?" said Broward. "You think I'm a Russky agent?"
"I didn't say I intended to wreck the transmitters," said Scone. "No. I know what you are. Or, I think I do. You're not a Russky. You're a...."
Scone stopped. Like Broward, he felt the rock floor quiver, then start shaking. And a low rumbling reached them, coming up through their feet before their ears detected it.
Scone, instead of throwing himself flat on the floor—an instinctive but useless maneuver—jumped up from his squatting position.
"Now! Now! The others'll be too scared to move!"
Broward rose, though he wanted to cling to the floor. Directly below them—or, perhaps, to the side but still underground—a white-hot "tongue" was blasting a narrow tunnel through the rock. Behind it, also hidden within the rock, in a shaft which the vessel must have taken a long time to sink without being detected, was a battlebird. Only a large ship could carry the huge generators required to drive a tongue that would damage a base. A tongue, or snake, as it was sometimes called. A flexible beam of "straightened-out" photons, the ultimate development of the laser.
And when the tongue reached the end of the determined tunnel, then the photons would be "un-sprung". And all the energy crammed into the compressed photons would dissipate.
"Follow me!" said Scone, and he began running.
Broward took a step, halted in amazement, called out, "The suits ... other way!"