"All right," he ordered. "You men know the story. The Kastil's down here ready for work. And it's going to mean work if we're going to beat her back to Earth. Now, let's go. But watch your step."
They worked. Eighteen hours a day they worked. From the steel-like ground they scooped a dozen tons of the dirty black uranium ore and sent it hurtling back to the Bertha.
But in spite of all their efforts, the more modern equipment of the Kastil overtook them in a day. The blackness on their left was riddled with the flare of digging torches and the slender fire-trails of the jets soaring between the pit and the Kastil.
And now and again, Randell's drawling voice broke into Scott's ears. "You're slowing up, Bertha. Seventy tons for us today. Are you poor little men getting tired?" He clucked sympathetically, then burst into a yell of laughter. "We'll have the ore cleaned off this rock before you get half loaded."
But Scott and the men of the Bertha worked silently, with savage haste, forgetting sleep and food to keep the tonnage flowing to their ship. They had almost forgotten the cats....
But not for long.
Staggering with fatigue, Scott swayed into Central Control, and sagged into a seat. He had been too long in a space suit. A dull pounding beat behind his eyes. "I came as soon as you called the pit, Captain Elderburg. You sounded pretty urgent."
"It's urgent," Elderburg said. "We're beaten."
Scott stiffened. Fatigue fell from him as he gazed closely at the Captain, saw for the first time the bitter dullness of Elderburg's eyes.