He gave his soft-voiced orders, and Armstrong and Dodge began loading a gray-painted official car with portable weapons.
"Stand by," he instructed the four men left behind. "Two off and two on. Watch the teleprinters for a Red Alert - just in case these people are Triplanet agents, trying to cripple the project until their fleets can strike."
The car was ready when he recalled his date for lunch with Ruth, and telephoned her hastily to say he wouldn't have time to eat.
He tried to sound casual, and the project had parted them countless times before, but she must have heard the anxious tension in his voice.
"Clay!" she broke in sharply. "What's the trouble now?"
"Nothing, darling," he lied uneasily. "Nothing at all."
He hurried to join the men in the car, and they stopped at the computing section for Ironsmith.
No trained fighter, that indolent clerk would be useless in a trap, but Forester wanted to keep an eye on him.
He couldn't understand how Ironsmith fitted into this sinister picture, or forget his sick suspicion that the mathematician had been trusted too far.
Sergeant Stone saluted respectfully as they stopped at the main gate, and Forester tried to question him.
Years of service must have taught him the protective value of ignorance, however, because he could recall nothing at all unusual, sir, about that little girl in yellow.
Tense at the wheel, Forester drove down the twisting road to the desert and west to Salt City and on across the coast range.
Beyond the mountains, they came down through a wall of chill gray fog, to the salt smell and the dull roaring of the sea.
Somber with stray thoughts of the supernova and all its consequences, Forester turned south on the coast road.
The round stone tower of the old Dragonrock Light stood dim in the fog, half a mile from the road, on a cragged granite islet still joined to the mainland by the ruin of a storm-shattered causeway.
Forester parked the car, as near as he could drive, and nodded at Ironsmith to follow him.
"Set up your rocket launcher in that ditch," he told Armstrong.
"Fire without warning at any boat or plane that starts to leave - even if you think we're aboard.
If we aren't back in exactly one hour, I want you to blow that tower off the rock.
Any contrary order will be sent under duress, and you will ignore it."
"Okay, Chief," Armstrong agreed reluctantly, and looked at his watch.
Dodge was already unfolding the tripod mount.
Forester gave those two able men a smile of confidence, and then peered mistrustfully at Ironsmith, who was unconcernedly folding a fresh stick of gum into his mouth and tossing away the empty wrapper.
Annoyed at his calm, Forester told him curtly to come along.
Grinning pleasantly, Ironsmith started scrambling briskly ahead over the wet, storm-tilted stones of the old causeway, which made an uncomfortable footpath.
Forester followed, shivering to the raw bite of the mist-laden wind, and suddenly regretful of his impulsive decision.
If this were really a trap, it occurred to him, the Triplanet agents had probably come ashore from a space raider lying underwater off the old lighthouse, and with the fog for a veil they might have him and the secret of the project safe on board long before that hour was up.
"Hello, Dr. Forester!"
The child's voice came to meet them through the mist, thin and high as some plaintive bird- call above the sigh of the wind and the murmur of the sea, and then he saw her standing above them at the base of the crumbling tower, tiny and alone.
The wind whipped her thin yellow dress, and her skinny knees were blue and shaking with the cold.
Chapter SIX
FORESTER CLIMBED to meet her, breathless and uneasy.
"Please be careful," she called anxiously.
"The rocks are so slick and wet." The gusty wind blew her tiny voice away, and then she was saying, "-waiting to see you.
Mr. White said you'd have to come."
Ahead of him, young Ironsmith ran up the spray-drenched rocks to the little girl.
He grinned at her, his face pink and shining from the wind and exercise, and murmured something to her, and gave her a stick of chewing gum.
Forester thought they seemed too friendly, although he tried to suspend his harsh suspicion when the clerk turned back thoughtfully to help him up the last high step.
Greeting him with a timid nod, little Jane Carter trustfully offered Ironsmith her small grimy hand, and led them toward an open archway in the base of the old tower.
"Oh, Mr. White," she called eagerly. "Here they are."
A huge man came stalking out of that dark doorway.
He towered a whole head above Forester, and the fiery red of his flowing hair and magnificent beard gave him a kind of vagabond splendor.
He moved with a graceful, feline sort of strength, yet the angular planes of his ruddy face looked unyieldingly stubborn.
"We knew you'd be along, Forester, Ironsmith." His soft low voice was deep as the booming of the surf.
"Glad you came, because we need you both very badly."
He nodded at the dark archway. "Come and meet my associates."
Amiably, Ironsmith shook the big man's offered hand, commenting like a delighted tourist on the bleak grandeur of the view.
But Forester stepped back warily, his narrowed eyes looking for a Triplanet agent.
"Just a second!" The fabric and the cut of White's threadbare, silver-colored cloak belonged to no familiar fashion, and his soft accent seemed too carefully accurate to be native.
"First, I want to see your papers."