Rob’s brows furrowed. “I’d like to believe she didn’t do it too. But she’s the switchboard operator on Luna. She was on when we left. Who else could it have been?”
“There still must have been someone else,” Clay persisted. “I know my sister too well. She would have known what would happen if she had spoken openly.”
After setting the ship on course and under full rocket thrust, Rob and Lieutenant Swenson took time to study the elaborate firing mechanism in the navigator’s compartment that would send the bombs on their way a few hours from now. The electroscope which gave the reading on the R-cloud was located nearby. The gauge had shown consistent increase ever since the blast-off from Titan, indicating that they were drawing closer to the cosmic menace all the time.
Within the next half hour tension had grown nearly to fever pitch, and yet there was still some time before the crucial zero hour. Rob found himself pacing restlessly about the navigation compartment. Lieutenant Swenson was rattling keys in his pocket, and Rob guessed that the others must also be similarly tightened up.
Clay’s grinning face appeared at the door of the navigator’s cabin. The young cadet looked as calm as if he were on nothing more than a sight-seeing tour. He carried a tray on which sealed containers filled with lavender drinks were held by magnetism.
“How about some palm-berry tea, gentlemen?” he said, setting the tray down on a magnetic table.
Lieutenant Swenson smiled at the youth whom he had tongue-lashed on the previous flight. “You’re a lifesaver, Clay,” he said, picking up a container and beginning to suck on the connected straw.
Palm-berry tea was a tasty beverage made from a dwarf Venusian swamp plant. It was a splendid sedative for “space nerves” and was always carried on long voyages. Under the harried circumstances of their blast-off, Rob had forgotten to have a supply of the tea put aboard.
“Where did you get this?” Rob asked, taking a glass.
“I knew it would come in handy, sir, when our stomachs got to knotting up,” Clay replied, “and so I got a box from the commissary just before coming aboard. Every crew has to have a cook, so I elected myself.”