"There he is!" said the jeep's driver, pointing.
Kiffer could see a spacesuited figure on the target tower. He twisted the dial on his chest and said to the men in the second jeep: "Check that projector! Make sure it isn't in operation!"
"It's not," said one of the men. "He had a timer connected to the firing mechanism. He got a ten-second burst from it, according to the timer reading."
"Thanks. We'll pick him up, then."
The jeep swerved toward the tower and pulled up underneath it in a swirl of dust that settled slowly and evenly in the low gravity of the airless satellite. Kiffer jumped out of the jeep, grabbed the rungs of the ladder, and lifted himself to the platform at the top of the twenty-foot tower.
He stuck his head up over the edge and saw Roysland. The man was sitting on a small chair with his back to the ladder. Surrounding him were the various recording instruments that had been rigged up on the platform for testing the animals and the effects of the beam on them.
Kiffer climbed on up and twisted his helmet phone control to Roysland's frequency. As he put his hand on Roysland's shoulder, he said: "Stand up, Roysland."
Roysland jerked around. "What? Oh. Hi, Kiffer; I saw you coming in the jeep." He paused then, and though Kiffer couldn't see very well through the heavy darkness of the helmet's glare-filtering polarization, he could have sworn that Roysland was grinning. He would have been right.