After a minute's silence, he leaped to his feet. "Damn that operator! I'm going to see what's wrong."
He started for the starboard passage, a babble of voices breaking out behind him. Matt was a stocky, powerfully built man in his thirties, the expedition's palaeobotanist. He reached the starboard ladder, ran up to the control deck and shouldered into the radio shack without knocking.
"What's up?" he demanded of the operator, a thin freckled youth who was staring at the banks of equipment in perplexity.
Sparks knit his brows.
"Nothing—that I can find."
"What!"
"There isn't a damn thing wrong at this end. The broadcast was interrupted. Power failure, maybe."
Matt Magoffin ran his hand through his short crisp black hair, alarm in his blue eyes.
"Have you tried to contact Earth?"
"No. Not yet."