There was a small outcropping of limestone near the cement walk, and he stepped over to it and sat down. He would have been happy to rest and enjoy for a few moments his escape and his triumph, but he had to let the others know so that they might have hope.
He closed his eyes and groped across the stars toward Grismet. Almost immediately he felt an impatient tug at his mind, strong because there were many clamoring at once to be heard. He counted them. There were seventeen. So one more had been captured since he had left Grismet.
"Be quiet," the told them. "I'll let you see, after a while. First I have to reach the two of us that are still free."
Obediently, the seventeen were still, and he groped some more and found another of his kind deep in an ice cave in the polar regions of Grismet.
"How goes it?" he asked.
The figure on Grismet lay stretched out at full length on the blue ice, his eyes closed. He answered without moving: "They discovered my radiation about an hour ago. Pretty soon, they'll start blasting through the ice."
The one on Earth felt the chill despair of his comrade and let go. He groped about again until he found the last one, the only other one left. He was squatting in the cellar of a warehouse in the main city of Grismet.
"Have they picked up your trail yet?" he asked.
"No," answered the one in the cellar. "They won't for a while. I've scattered depots of radiation all through the town. They'll be some time tracking them all down, before they can get to me."
In a flash of his mind, Hall revealed his escape and the one on Grismet nodded and said: "Be careful. Be very careful. You are our only hope."