It was an hour and a half before he got close
enough to be detected from the outlaw stronghold. Immediately, the
volcano began spewing out missiles. Poole hastily took the _Lester
Dawes_ ten miles down the rift-valley in sixty seconds, while Stefan
Jorisson put out a nuclear-warhead missile and left it circling about
where the ship had been. From their respective positions, Fred Karski
and Charley Gatworth filled the airspace midway to the volcano with
counter-missiles, each loaded with four rockets. There were
explosions, fireballs in the air and rising cumulus clouds of
varicolored smoke and dust. Only about half the enemy missiles reached
the _Lester Dawes'_ former position.

When their controllers, back at the volcano, couldn't see the ship in
their screens, the missiles bunched together. Immediately, Jorisson
sent his missile up to join them and detonated it. Including his own,
eight nuclear weapons went off together in a single blast that shook
the ground like an earthquake and churned the air like a hurricane.
Klem Zareff came on-screen at once.

"Now what did you do?" he demanded. "Blew the whole place up, didn't
you?"

Rodney Maxwell told him. Zareff laughed. "They might just think they
got the ship; all the pickups would be smashed before they could see
what really happened. You're about ten miles south of that? Be with
you in a few minutes."

They got a screen on for his rearview pickup. Zareff had with him a
dozen recon-cars, some of them under robo-control; six gunboats
followed, and behind them, to the horizon, other craft were strung
out--airboats, troop carriers, and freight-scows. They could see enemy
missiles approaching in Zareff's front screen; counter-missiles got
most of them, and a couple of pilotless recon-cars were sacrificed.
The _Lester Dawes_ blasted more missiles as they crossed the top of
the mountain range. Then Zareff's car was circling in and entering at
one of the ship's open cargo-ports. Zareff and Anse Dawes got out.

"Gunboats are only half an hour behind," Zareff said. "Get some
screens on to them, Anse; you know the combinations. Now let's see
what kind of a mess we're in here."

It was almost a miracle, the way the tottering old man Conn had seen
on the dock at Litchfield when he had arrived from Terra had been
rejuvenated.

The rest of the reinforcements arrived slowly, sending missiles and
counter-missiles out ahead of them. Zareff began worrying about the
supply; the