"Get it up," ordered the general. "Get up a squadron. Scramble the Moon patrol and send out reserves from Earth at once."
"Right!" said the colonel.
The young man was so engrossed in the makings of his rescue party that he didn't see the wall open up behind him.
There was a squeak of rubber tires and he whirled to see Hafitz, in his wheelchair, slamming toward him. The fat man's hand held a weird-looking gun.
The young man recoiled. His back pushed against a row of control buttons.
Then everything went white.
Paul Asher blinked his eyes, like a man awakening from a vivid dream.
The house lights went on and the manager of the theater came on the stage. He stood in front of the blank master screen with its checkerboard pattern of smaller screens, on which the several lines of action had taken place simultaneously. Paul took off his selectorscope spectacles with the earphone attachments.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the manager said. "I regret very much having to announce that this vicarion of the production Spies from Space was defective. The multifilm has broken and, because of the complexity of the vikie process, it will be impossible to splice it without returning it to the laboratory.