full hour passed before Garth returned, an hour that Edwin Dollard spent pacing the narrow confines of the lodge's central room. His eyes constantly consulted the slow march of minutes on the luminescent dial of his platinum chronometer ... for while it was not imperative that the space yacht he had refurbished should soar starward at the precise hour agreed upon, there did reign a crucial period of four or five hours immediately at hand, during which the most advantageous passage to Venus should be commenced.
When Garth finally reappeared through the steel doorway, his thin long face reflected the strain he also felt as departure time neared.
"I checked the roadway two miles up the valley," he reported. "No activity in sight. There was a riot at Leevining, or so one of your guards told me—and a big pitched battle in Bishop between lowlanders and highlanders."
"Another day or two and they'd be swarming all over this region," Dollard said.
"You can bet their first reaction would be to dismantle the ship at sight," Garth informed him. "Lucky we're getting out in time. If the mobs couldn't pilot the vessel themselves, it'd be human nature to see to it that nobody else got to do so, either. Misery loves company—even in the face of death."
"The scum," said Dollard. He donned a jaunty space cap he had often worn on pleasure flights to his outlying holdings. Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he grinned: "Well, Garth, shall we go?"
Garth nodded. He detached a torch that was clasped to his waist, then opened the tunnel door that was carved out of a braced section of the rear wall where the lodge had been built to shore into the mountainside. Entering, the two men threaded a winding route through a narrow dripping passageway, guided by the thin yellow beam of Garth's light. They emerged several hundred feet farther on in a valley of long shadows, cut off from the world on three sides by abrupt cliffs. No ravines opened on this valley. Only by a desperate climb over the surrounding peaks could it be reached—and hence it had been immune to spying eyes. Here, amounting to a feat of superb pilotage in itself, Dollard's vessel had been landed weeks earlier in anticipation of just such a need as it now served.
Sturdy shrubbery screened the tunnel exit, although concealment had not proved to be necessary. As they broke into the light, Dollard and Garth pushed aside stunted conifers and half-stumbled, half-ran down a shale-strewn incline which led them to the valley's floor.