He did not try to pick up the second air tank. Instead, he increased his speed over the fantastic landscape of riven stone and upthrust rock. He went faster, floating twenty and thirty yards at a bound and calling angrily into the eternal silence about him. This higher speed was not particularly safe. A stumble on any of his landings could have meant a nasty crash and possibly a smashed helmet plate. But he raged on. He'd just traveled nearly a quarter of the way around the moon to try to effect the quiet and nonspectacular prevention of a murder. Now he found his trouble wasted, his precautions nullified, and the operation of his base imperiled. Moreover, the welfare of the men on Farside was threatened drastically. They might have to go through an entire lunar night, two weeks long, without any contact with other human beings. Long, long minutes of speeded-up moon gait went by, the suit radio sending out snapped calls for Holmes and Kent to answer or, failing them, for Grimaldi Base to reply. He was less than five miles from the base when he got an answer to his call. He'd climbed gradually to a high plateau which now dropped downward again so that what seemed an infinity of explosion-scarred desolation lay before him. He was in line of sight of Grimaldi. "Grimaldi answers," said a voice in his helmet phones. "Grimaldi answers. Over." Words fairly burst from McCauley's lips, though the rhythm of his twenty- and thirty-yard leaps remained unbroken. "How in the blistering Gehenna," he rasped, "did Holmes and Kent get out of the base together? What fool sent them off?" The voice in his headphones jerked a little. "Why--it was your order, sir! A relay from Earth came in. Holmes was on monitor duty. He wrote down the order, sir. You ordered him and Kent to take the sledge with the relay unit for Repeater Two and set it up where it belonged, sir." McCauley almost strangled in his wrath. "Have they got there yet?" "No, sir. They should use it to report that it's operating, sir. They haven't." "When they do," rasped McCauley, "tell them that I specifically order them to stay in communication with you until I get there! Absolutely no excuse will be accepted for failure! I'm less than five miles off. I should get there in a quarter of an hour--twenty minutes at the outside. They think they're smart, but they've slipped up this time! Tell them that!" "Y-yes, sir." The headphone clicked.