Roysland turned around. Kiffer Samm was sitting in the driver's seat of a small jeep.
As he climbed in, Roysland said, "I felt the vibration as you pulled up, but I didn't pay any attention to it. Coming up behind a guy like that is real sneaky."
Kiffer's chuckle coincided with the slight vibration of the jeep as it started moving after the six-wheeler.
The testing area was some miles from the permanent labs. Roysland wanted to test the weapon by firing at Kandoris herself. The huge blue-white sun could certainly take anything directed at her.
It took the better part of three days to set up the site for the test, and during most of that time, Roysland Dwyn was in a spacesuit. The construction engineers had rigged up a plastic shell for dormitories and other inside necessities, but the work had to be done in the vacuum of space. By the time the set-up had been completed, Roysland felt exhausted in every muscle of his huge body. On the "afternoon" of the third day, he peeled off his oversize spacesuit and lay back on his cot. It was much too short for him, and his feet stuck out over the edge; but he was too tired to worry about that.
Kiffer was sitting on his own bunk, massaging his neck to get the kinks out. "The thing that bothers me," he said, "is the eternal sunlight. That blasted star won't go down for another seventy days."
Roysland nodded, but it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere.
"Suppose there is a backwash from this thing," Roysland said at last. "That would account for a lot of things. We've been wondering why the Enlissa ships didn't loot our own vessels after they used the mindjammer."
"Certainly," Kiffer said. "It's obvious. Their own weapon backfired on them, and left the Enlissa ship incapable of doing any looting. I figured that out a long time ago."