“That should give them all the proof they want.” muttered Straw. “All right, let’s get at it.”
Sharr said suddenly, “No, wait.”
“Wait? For what?”
The Valloan girl, lying flat beside them, had been searching the edges of the compound with her eyes. Now she pointed.
“See the shrubs planted here and there around the edge? Why should they be planted there? There’s a little metal post inside that one clump — I can just glimpse it.”
Evers understood, and turned a little cold. He said, “Detectors?”
She nodded her red head. “I think a hidden network of beams around the whole compound.”
Straw swore softly. “Never thought of that. Say, this wench’s being from that thieves’ world comes in handy.”
Sharr bristled up at that, turning her head with her green eyes flaring, but Evers hastily pressed her arm.
“Shut up, Straw. We’ve got to figure how to get through the beam.”
He couldn’t think of any way. Sharr whispered that the beam would surely be too high and too deep to leap over or dig under. Their whispered conference was interrupted by the distant roar of a motor.
A half-trac loaded with men, its headlights flaring, was racing across the compound in their general direction.
“Oh, oh — they’ve found the Phoenix empty and have called back for more searchers,” said Straw.
“They’ll have to go out through the beam,” Evers said rapidly. “Here’s our chance. Be ready to jump when that trac crosses the line.”
His idea was simple, but he thought it would work. When the half-trac crossed the detector beam, the alarms would register automatically — unless they lifted the beam for a moment. In either case, it was the one moment when they themselves could cross without arousing notice.
The half-trac, avoiding the clump of peony-trees in which they crouched, reached the edge of the compound a few hundred yards from them. As it cut across invisible beams, loud bells rang clangorously somewhere back on the spaceport. The iron clangor ceased a moment later, as the half-trac plunged on out into the forest.
But during that moment of clangoring alarms, Evers and his three companions had plunged across the invisible barrier. They ran low through the dim starlight toward the shadow of the nearest warehouse, and crouched against the cool metal wall.
Evers, looking along the wall, said, “No doors this side. I want a look in here. We’ll look in all these warehouses till we find what we’re after.”
“Yeah,” said Straw. “Well, having Starr along will help us. You know the saying, Set a thief—”
In a hissing whisper, Sharr said to Evers, “I will stun this man if he calls me more names.”
“He’s only kidding rough,” Evers said hastily. “Anyway, I know that on Valloa the hereditary profession of thief is no disgrace.”
“It is not, but when an Earthman says it, it is different!”
“Why the devil did you have to get her going?” Evers demanded of Straw. “Is this any time for your brand of teasing? Eric—”
But Lindeman was not beside them. The little scientist had crept away around the corner of the warehouse.
They followed hastily, holding their guns. They found Lindeman beside the warehouse door.
“Locked,” he said.
“I could blast the lock but it’d be noisy,” Evers said. “Do you think you can open it, Sharr?”
“I will not for Earthmen who laugh at thieves,” she said sulkily.
He took her by her bare shoulders and spoke to her, his voice an earnest whisper. “We look on such things differently on Earth, and you must not mind what Straw said. This is our only chance, Sharr.”
She was silent, and then she said, “I’ll try.”
From inside the belt of her silken pants she took two delicate steel probes, as thin as wires. In the darkness, her fingers explored the heavy lock and then she crouched close to it and began to work.
They waited, not happy about waiting, with a coming and going of half-tracs audible far across the compound. Evers thought it was lucky that the search in the forest seemed to have pulled everyone away from the warehouse area, but he didn’t think their luck would go on much longer.
Something clicked in the lock, and Sharr drew back. She said triumphantly, “There were alarm-wires in it — but I shorted them before I opened the lock.”
“You’re wonderful,” he told her, and meant it. He slid the door open a little more than a foot, and they went quickly inside.
Lindeman’s pocket torch sent its little beam angling around the dark interior. He uttered an exclamation.
“This stuff is from Andromeda, all right — look at those things! Plastic and metal bonded together, just like the things we saw in that K’harn city.”
He was swinging the beam around and it illuminated the strange tangle of objects that half-filled the warehouse.
These instruments and machines were unearthly and looked it, the product of a technology and a psychology utterly alien to this galaxy. Silvery metal disks hung suspended in an oval plastic framework, in one incomprehensible gadget. Next to it towered an eight-foot-high cluster of diverging metal rods that sprang from a cage-like metal base, the base being linked by thick ribbons of a darker metal to a black cube. There was a thing of crystal spheres grouped around a larger sphere that looked almost like an enormous toy. Yes, they had seen objects like these in the faraway alien cities of the K’harn.
Evers felt staggered by the sheer magnitude of Schuyler’s depredations. Here was a plundered science brought home from the farthest shores of space, from worlds that were old when Earth was still savage. He had seen some of those robbed worlds, and he thought of the sum of agony that these things had cost.
“Wait till GC gets here and we show them this stuff!” crowed Straw. “It’s proof enough to cook Schuyler for—”
Evers suddenly motioned Lindeman to snap out his torch, and ran to the closed door and laid his ear against it. “Listen!”
In the sudden silence, he heard trac-cars roaring past the warehouse. One of the cars pulled up and then he heard voices, loud and urgent.
“Check every warehouse! They’re not out in the forest and the boss says they must be here or in the docks!”
Startlingly loud outside the door at which Evers listened, came another voice. “Hey, Alden, look here! This lock’s been tampered with—”
Evers jumped back as the door slid suddenly open. A man, with a heavy pistol in his hand, appeared in the opening silhouetted against the glimmer of starshine outside.
Instantly, Evers notched his gun to stunner strength and shot. His beam dropped the man in a huddled heap.
Outside, the first voice yelled, “They’re in there — get them!”
There was a rush of feet.
“Stunner-power!” Evers exclaimed. “We’ll have enough explaining to do for GC without dead men.”
Four or five men piled through the doorway in a rush. They hadn’t a chance, coming into the dark, interior of the warehouse against the light outside. The beams of the three men and Sharr dropped them before they could shoot.
More half-tracs were roaring up and stopping outside. Then the loud voice called.
“Lindeman! Come out with your hands empty and you won’t be hurt! You and Straw and Evers haven’t got a chance!”
Evers shouted back. “Next time, it’ll be lethal beams — better stay out!”
He whispered to the others then,
“If we could hold them till the GC ships come, we’d be all right.”
“Yeah,” said Straw, without conviction. “Twelve hours, maybe. We’d be all right if we can do that.”