"No!" said Vickers flatly; "I won't."
"But—"
"No buts about it. With my record, it would be poison for me, if my name ever became associated with anything like International Spy Ring, Inc. I'm through, Thorpe, I've quit. I can't afford to be sent back to Jupiter."
Tani Fralick suddenly burst into a flood of tears. Vickers clenched his fist. At that instant a bell began to ring insistently.
"The raid," Thorpe said. "What say we watch it? Anyway, Vickers, you can't leave 'til it's over."
Vickers grunted, sank deeper into his chair. Tani's soft child-like crying was getting under his skin, but he steeled himself against it.
Thorpe pressed a button on his desk, and a huge televisor screen on the wall behind him glowed into life. The multiple noises of Luna City rolled into the office shattering their isolation. The tri-dimensional effect was so real, that it was as if the wall itself had been removed and they were peering directly into the street outside the blue door. Vickers could read its idiotic sign.
INTERNATIONAL SPY RING
INCORPORATED
Secrets Bought and Sold
All at once he frowned as he discovered the silent men converging on the entrance. They were dressed in civilian clothes, threading their way unobtrusively through the press. ISP men, Vickers recognized, with a thrill of alarm.
One of them reached the portal, put out his hand for the knob.