Chapter 12

“Stand by, you space crawlers!” roared Bull Coxine into the microphone, but the loud laughter and singing of the noisily celebrating prisoners continued unabated over the intercom’s loud-speakers. “Avast there!” he bellowed again. “Stow that noise! Attention! And I want attention!”

Standing on the control deck of his ship, Coxine waited as the men gradually quieted down. No longer wearing the white prison coverall, he was dressed in a black merchant spaceman’s uniform, the snug-fitting jacket and trousers stretching tightly across his huge shoulders. He wore a black spaceman’s cap, and two paralo-ray pistol belts were crisscrossed over his hips.

“Now listen to me!” he roared again. “Let’s get one thing straight! I’m the skipper of this ship and the first man that thinks he’s smarter than me, let him speak up!”

There was a long pause and the big man added with an ominous whisper, “But I warn you, if one of you opens your mouth, you’ll take a swim in space!”

There was an angry murmur among the prisoners that Coxine heard over the intercom. “Don’t think I can’t take care of you, the lot of you, one by one or all at once. I cut my milk teeth on mutiny. I know how to start one and I know how to finish one! I needed a crew and that’s the only reason you’re here! Any spaceman that doesn’t like the way I run things aboard this ship, better keep it to himself, or start swimming back to the prison asteroid!” He paused. “Well? Are you all with me?”

There was a chorus of cheers on the intercom and Coxine nodded grimly.

“All right,” he continued, “now that we understand each other, I’ll get on with the business. Second-in-command to me will be Gus Wallace. Lieutenant Wallace!”

A roar of approval came over the loud-speaker.

“Third-in-command--Luther Simms! Lieutenant Simms!”

There was another roar of approval as the prisoners recognized the names of the men who had liberated them from the asteroid.

“Now, we’ll handle this ship as if it were any other freighter. The following men will be in charge of departments!”

As Coxine read off the list of jobs and the men to handle them, there were yells of approval and disapproval for favorites and old enemies. When the list of names had been read, he turned away from the intercom and faced his lieutenants, Wallace and Simms.

“Well, skipper,” boasted Wallace, “it looks like we’re in business again!”

“Yeah,” chimed in Simms. “In three hours we’ll be on our own asteroid and we can start planning our first strike!”

Coxine’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Get this, both of you!” he snapped. “What I said to those crawlers down below goes for you too. I’m the boss of this outfit and you don’t even guess about what we’re going to do, until I say so!”

“But, Bull--!” whined Wallace.

“Shut up!” roared Coxine. “And when you talk to me, you call me captain!”

Wallace and Simms looked at each other. “O.K., Captain,” muttered Simms.

“Yes, sir!” corrected Coxine.

“Yes, sir,” said Simms quickly.

“That’s better,” growled the giant spaceman. “Don’t get the idea that just because you were able to follow orders that it makes you smart. Because it doesn’t! It took me two and a half years to get the information collected onto these story spools and smuggle them out to you. Everything, from where to buy this spaceship to getting the light-key out of the time capsule, was my idea! My brains!”

“Sure, Captain,” said Wallace, “but we took the chances!”

“Yeah,” sneered Coxine. “You took chances! The only chance you took was in not paying attention to what I told you to do. I gave it all to you. Where to hold up the first freighter passenger, what to take, how to mount the atomic blasters, what code to use in getting through the prison defenses. The whole works! And I did it while sitting on the toughest Rock in the system. I smuggled it out right under the noses of those Solar Guard space crawlers. So forget about being smart, or you’ll wind up with that scum below decks!”

“Yes, sir!” said Wallace.

“Now get me a course to the asteroid and make it quick. And have some decent grub sent up to my quarters right away!”

The big man turned lightly on the balls of his feet and disappeared through the hatch. After a moment, Wallace turned to Simms.

“That big space-crawling bum!” snorted Wallace. “I oughta blast him!”

“Go ahead!” sneered Simms. “You were the one who wanted to get him off the Rock, not me!”

“Aw shut up!” snarled Wallace. He turned to the intercom and began barking orders to his new crew.

Tom Corbett sat in one corner of a cargo compartment that had been converted into sleeping quarters, watching the celebrating prisoners. Someone had broken into the galley stores and mixed a concoction of fruit, alcohol, and reactor priming fluid to make a foul-tasting rocket juice. The men sat about in various stages of undress as they changed from the white prison coveralls to the black uniforms of the merchant spaceman, and drank heavily from a huge pot of the liquid.

One of the men, short and stumpy, but with shoulders like an ape, was standing on a table boasting about his strength. He was stripped to the waist and Tom could see the powerful arms and chest beneath the black hair that covered his body. As he continued to brag, the prisoners laughed and jeered, calling him Monkey. The man’s face reddened and he offered to fight anyone in the room. A short, thin man with a hawk nose sitting next to Tom yelled, “Monkey,” and then darted behind a bunk. The man turned and looked angrily at Tom.

“You there!” the man on the table called, looking at Tom. “You call me Monkey?”

Tom shook his head. Since the blast-off he had stayed away from the men as much as he could, certain that sooner or later someone would challenge him and discover he wasn’t a prisoner. He hoped to remain aboard the ship long enough to plant a signal for the Solar Guard to follow. Tom felt almost certain they would be heading for Wallace and Simms’ hide-out. And so far, the men had been so excited over their new freedom they hadn’t bothered him. He had managed to sit quietly in the corner of the storage compartment and watch them.

“I’m talking to you!” shouted the hairy man, looking straight at Tom. “You called me Monkey and then lied about it! Maybe you’re scared, eh?”

He slipped off the table and advanced toward Tom. The young cadet tried to figure a way out of the threatening fight. He wasn’t afraid of the man, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. And one of the surest ways of letting Wallace and Simms know he was aboard ship was to get into a fight. He couldn’t risk discovery. He had to signal the Solar Guard before he was caught. But how to get around the hairy, drunken criminal now standing over him?

Tom looked up and saw that the man would not be put off. He would have to fight. He took notice of the powerful arms and shoulders, and decided his best bet would be to stay away, but glancing around quickly he saw there wasn’t any room to retreat. The other prisoners were crowding around, eager to watch the fight. Suddenly his opponent let out an animal-like roar and jumped to pin him down on the deck.