"Cracking up, eh, Wallace?" Norman Haynes sneered.
He turned up the volume of the reproducer.
Irene's voice was the first in the speaker. "Chet!" she was urging. "Chet Wallace! Pa! Geedeh! Do you hear me? I left 487 of my own free will. I couldn't waste time, going to the Space Patrol for help—they'd want proof, and that would take a while to present. So—there was only one person and I thought you'd mistrust him.... Why don't you answer? Or have you left 487 too? I'm turning the mike over to somebody else, now. I found him on Enterprize, just come from Earth, Mr. Arthur Haynes...."
IV
I gasped, listening to Irene. I didn't know what surprised and confused me most—her being alive and safe, or what she'd done about old Art Haynes. Could I trust old Art? I had no way of telling. Had Irene told him about his nephew, or had she kept silent? Did he know he was opposed to Norman Haynes, or did he think it was somebody else who had sabotaged the project? Where would his loyalties be, if he found out? It was a ticklish situation.
As soon as Irene's ragged, excited breathing died away in the speaker, Norman Haynes took it upon himself to clarify his own stand, and my uncertainties. He looked at Geedeh and Pa and me, tense and suffering in the grip of the gravity, and tortured with doubt.
"Uncle Art is an old fool," he said. "So he thinks he'll come back to the asteroids, and replace me in the business, does he? Well, he should have died long ago, and now is as good a time as any! He might as well be part of the accident, too, along with those space bums of yours. Nobody'll ever know!"