"So do you," Bill told him.
Skagarach said, "I think Summers has been killed. Milo is being shelled with mortars, but his muster is winning. We should have the three-stage rockets here within half an hour."
The other scientists, five men ranging from thirty to fifty years old, had been brought in by Neanderthals. Cuff glanced at them now and then said to Howard, "I want you to take us on a tour of the station immediately. I want you to show me and Skagarach, and our technical officers, exactly how everything is worked, from the H-bomb launchers to the refuse outlets. Eventually you'll come over to us, Howard; but for now you've got to show us under pressure, I realize." His eye roamed the room. He pointed to the tallest scientist, a man nearly as bulky as Bill Cuff himself. "What's his job?"
"Communications technician," said Howard blankly.
On the words, Cuff was out of his chair, hurtling across the room; he shot his great arms out and gripped the astounded scientist by the throat and the top of his head. Whirling, he flying-mared the man over his shoulder, and as the scientist's heavy frame nearly touched the floor, Cuff perked upward again, so that the whole body was snapped like a blacksnake whip. There was a terrible cracking sound and the man's form went limp. Cuff dropped the body to the floor and stepped over it.
"Only an example, Howard," said the Neanderthal easily. He came back to his seat. Nessa was sobbing hysterically, and all the men were white as chalk.
Skagarach said, "Probably unnecessary, but vivid enough," and laughed. Cuff said, "All right, Howard, will you show us the station?"
"Do it," I said to my brother in a low tone. He looked at me and his eyes were a little wet. He shook himself and said, "Come on," in a dull voice. Howard was not afraid of anything, I know, but Cuff's unvoiced threat, to act with each of the other scientists in turn as he had with the communications technician, appalled my brother and dulled his reasoning—even as Nessa's danger had dulled mine in the boat. We followed him through an automatically operated door into the next chamber.
For half an hour we worked through the space station, Howard pointing out in an emotionless voice the personnel quarters, control room, the gauge panels, fuel storage tanks (for the small rocket clamped to the center spoke of the wheel and reserved for emergency flight back to Terra), the space suits and the many instrument panels. We saw television cameras so powerful that from the 1,000-mile altitude they could pick up movements as small as those made by a single man on a prairie. We saw the astrodome, the oxygen supplies, the air blower pump, the air locks and moon-to-earth radios; the recreation area and the radar equipment. Everything that would support life in space.
Last of all we saw the weapons: the levers that would release the hell-bombs and guided missiles, the aiming mechanisms, the terrible arsenal that was to threaten the world and keep it under control, at the benevolent mercy of the men who lived within the wheel.