"But we gotta do something! Does Eli know?"
The slinky one peered around the table, finding no reassurance in any of the blank faces. He gulped and subsided.
Later, he and McGruder constituted themselves a delegation to lay the problem before the scientist. Eli had practically barricaded himself in the control room. At his bellowed command meals were brought to him at irregular intervals by Maw Barstow. He rarely appeared outside of his retreat, except when he ventured forth briefly for a peep through the periscope.
"What'd he say?" demanded DuChane, when the two returned from their self-imposed mission.
"None o' your business!" McGruder snarled.
"The old coot don't seem to get it," complained Link. "All he done was to rant about how they gypped him when they sold him the steel."
The pale-featured outlaw girl, Norma, taking a listless turn along the ramp in a robe provided from Maw Barstow's meager store, was an inadvertent listener to this exchange. She seemed inclined to brush by, but suddenly her deep-set eyes glowed with fire.
"It's a joke!" she contributed unexpectedly. "You save me from the law, doctor up my carcass—and for what?"
"Does seem rather futile," agreed Marlin, sympathetically. He reflected that as her hair grew longer she was becoming a great deal more feminine in appearance. The wound in her neck was by now little more than a scar.