enemy didn't seem to be running short. By 1300--Conn noted
the time incredulously; the battle seemed to have been going on
forever, instead of just four hours--the _Lester Dawes_ had moved
halfway around the volcano and was almost due west of it, and the
eight gunboats were spaced all around the perimeter. Then one stopped
transmitting; in the other screens, there was a rising fireball where
she had been. The radio was loud with verbal reports.

"_Poltergeist_," Zareff said, naming half a dozen names. One or two of
them had been schoolmates of Conn's at the Academy; he knew how he'd
feel about it later, but now it simply didn't register.

"They're launching missiles faster than we can shoot them down," he
said.

"That's usually the beginning of the end," Zareff said. "I saw it
happen too often during the War. We've got to get inside that place.
It's a lot of harmless fun to send contragravity robots out to smash
each other, but it doesn't win battles. Battles are won by men,
standing with their feet on the ground, using personal weapons."

"We'll have to win this one pretty soon," Rodney Maxwell said. "The
amount of nuclear energy we've been releasing will be detectable
anywhere on the planet by now. The Government has a ship like the
_Lester Dawes_ in commission; if this keeps on, she'll be coming out
for a look."

"Then we'll have help," Captain Poole said.

"We need Government help like we need the polka-dot fever," Rodney
Maxwell said. "If they get in it, they'll claim the spaceport
themselves, and we'll have fought a battle for nothing."

Well, that was it, then. The spaceport was essential to the Maxwell
Plan. He'd gotten seven men killed--eight, if the recon-car that was
taking Abe Samuels to the hospital in Litchfield didn't make it in
time--and it was up to him to see that they hadn't died for nothing.
He spread the photo-map and the spaceport plans on the chart table.

"Look at this," he said.

Klem Zareff looked at it. He didn't like it any better than Conn had.
He studied the plan for a moment, chewing his cigar.

"You know, it's possible they don't know that thing exists," he said,
without too much conviction. "You'll be betting the lives of at least
twenty men; fewer than that couldn't accomplish anything."

"I'll be putting mine on the table along with them," Conn said. "I'll
lead them in."

He was wishing he hadn't had to say that. He did, though. It was the
only thing he could say.

"Y