"We'll beat them," he was growling. "Damn them, we'll beat them yet! No government is going to tell me what I can do and what I can't do.”
Out of the air lock, they raced down the path to the field. In the center of the field reared the ghostly machine, like a shimmering skeleton standing guard over the bleakness that was Pluto. As he ran, Gary glanced up and out into space.
A voice sang in his brain, the voice of his own thoughts: "We're coming!
Hang on, you Engineers! We're on our way. Little puny man is coming out to help you. Mankind, is marching to another crusade! To the biggest crusade he has ever known!”
Tommy Evans' mighty ship was at the far end of the field, a gleaming thing of silver, with the tubes a dull red, preheated to stand the sudden flare of rocket blasts in the deadly cold of Pluto's surface.
Yes, thought Gary, another crusade. But a crusade without weapons. Without even knowing who the enemy might be. Without a definite plan of campaign.
With no campaign at all. With just an ideal and the sound of bugles out in space. But that was all man had needed ever. Just an ideal and the blaring of bugles.
Caroline cried out in wonder, almost in fear, and Gary glanced toward the center of the field.
The machine was gone! Where it had stood there was nothing, no faintest hint it had ever stood there. Just empty field and nothing else.
"Jensen turned on the power!" Kingsley shouted. "The machine is warped into another dimension. The road is open to the Engineers.”