"Da, Da eta—" with an effort Bessie switched to English. "Explosion? What happened?"
"Oh, Mike just had to get the Security men off guard. Something to do with the air supply. He asked me to apologize to you if you don't feel so good. But after all, we got the Lab back and that's the main thing."
"Security. Oh! I've got to get to Nails right away. They've taken over Earth, too, you know. We've got to make sure they don't get control of the projects. We'll be shot of course. But their ambitions rest on having control of Hot Rod and the wheel. Probably secret control—"
"But—"
"Nails has got to figure out how to destroy the project without too many casualties. Maybe he can get some of our men back to Earth, though of course we're all expendable. We can't let these monsters have the wheel and Hot Rod! That's what they need for power—"
"Bessie—"
"Of course, we can stand and fight for as long as possible, but we're sitting ducks, and even with Hot Rod there's not much we can do—we can't fire on Earth, we'd hit friend as well as enemy. So I think we've just got to stand and fight a bit, and then destroy both Hot Rod and the wheel. Anyhow, that's Nails' decision, and I've got to get to Nails—"
"Whoa!" Millie finally managed to stem the flow. "We're not stuck—not just stuck here in orbit any longer, waiting to see what's going on on Earth," she said softly, "or what they're going to do about us 'mad scientists.' Mike and Ishie started this whole thing when one of their experiments turned out to be a space drive, and the boys are working real hard on getting a drive unit set up capable of taking our whole complex out into space. But they need somebody to tell the captain ... uh ... properly ... as soon as he's awake that is ... uh ... you know what I mean."
"Whoa, yourself, girl. What's this—space drive?"
"Well, they didn't find out themselves until after it had wiped out Thule Base—nearly ten hours after that, in fact. That magneto-ionic thing the Sacred Cow's been talking about—they invented that real quick to cover up. You see ... oh, it's too complicated.