"Are they gonna land or ain't they gonna land?" someone said as Kevin broke out the neutron guns and saw that every third man had one.
"Depends on their boss," said Kevin. "If he figures we can be scared off, he'll land. Otherwise, maybe he'll go away."
"Not that little stinker," Teejay told him. "Not Schuyler Barling. He won't go away. Will the fact that we're here first matter? It will not, for Schuyler knows we can't prove it. You ought to know better than to hope for that, Kevin. No, we can figure that Schuyler will move in on us."
"What happens then?" Steve demanded.
Teejay shrugged her bare, beautiful shoulders. "That I don't know. Schuyler may be a stinker and may be predictable, but he's not that predictable. Hey, it looks like the Frank Buck is coming down!"
The big ship, Steve saw, was doing precisely that. Its jets had been cut, and the ship fell like a stone. Twice its length separated it from the rubble-strewn pumice when the pilot kicked his jets over again, and something seemed to slap the Frank Buck back up toward the starry sky. The result was a first-rate landing.
"That would be Schuyler showing off," said Teejay wearily. "He must have been born in a tube and weaned on jet-slag, and he sure lets you know it."
Fifteen minutes later, Schuyler Barling and three of his officers entered the Gordak.
Barling got out of his vac-suit first, a tall, handsome man of about thirty, with short-cropped blond hair, pale blue eyes and petulant lips. "Captain Moore," he said, bowing slightly from the waist. Making fun of Teejay.
"Mr. Barling." As ever, the woman seemed cool and unruffled.