Ed Dukas winced as if in pain. He and Barbara and Prell looked at one another. In Ed's strange, small body, frustration and bitter anger fairly hummed.
"Security reasons." That could be a blanket excuse—minus explanations—for almost anything. Loman, knowing of something inimical and microscopic, and guessing at an intended journey from Mars, could well have had a hand in the suspension order. He was wary, and not sure that he had destroyed his hidden enemies.
The three stared down at the equipment that they had toiled so hard to produce. But Ed, like many another man before him who had been cornered, couldn't have quit even if he had willed it. Stubborn spunk, fear, need to regain losses, self-preservation and the awareness of the danger of millions of well-intentioned individuals, both android and human, all took part in the reason. And you could add the ancient and primal lust for revenge.
Ed crouched with the others on the rough floor of their chink in the rock. "Wait," he said at last. "Haven't small objects crossed space naturally—at least in hypothesis? Yes! Spores—living dust, their vital functions suspended. The old Arrhenius Theory of the propagation of life from world to world and solar system to solar system—throughout the universe. A spore, drifting high in an atmosphere, achieves escape velocity through molecular impacts and perhaps the pressure of solar light. It's driven into space, and onward. Uncle Mitch, couldn't the same thing happen to us far more readily, since we're not inert and we have minds to help direct our movements? Since we have beams of massive neutrons from the Midas Touch weapons? And aren't we more rugged than the first androids? Wouldn't we have a middling chance to endure raw space itself?"
Mitchell Prell eyed him quietly. Perhaps even his android cheeks blanched a trifle. "Something like that occurred to me once—a long time ago, Ed," he remarked at last, his voice very calm. "I didn't think it through. I guess it seemed just too out of the ordinary even for me. And there wasn't any need to try it. Perhaps I was scared."
"There's need now," Ed said.
Barbara's expression was a study of eagerness and half fear. "Eddie, have you maybe discovered something?" she exclaimed. "Uncle Mitch, if there is any chance that it would work, I'm game to try it!"
After a moment the scientist nodded. "I believe that there's a good chance it will work," he said.
Before the next sunup they were ready. Clothed in garments of linten fiber, they looked like savages from fifty thousand years before. Yet their present condition could have belonged to no primitive era. They were united by a tough line of twisted strands, and their equipment was lashed to their backs. To human eyes they would have been as invisible as spirits. Were they to demonstrate, even unintentionally, android superiority in yet another field? Maybe, maybe not.