Chapter 20

“I don’t care if the blasted ship blows up!” roared Captain Strong to the power-deck officer of the Solar Guard rocket cruiser Arcturus. “I want every ounce of thrust you can get out of this space heap!”

The young Solar Guard captain turned back to the loud-speaker of the audioceiver, turned the volume dial a fraction, and listened. The steady pronounced ping of Roger’s signal beacon filled his ears.

When Strong discovered that Coxine had outwitted him, he had gone aboard the rocket cruiser Arcturus of Squadron Ten and had continued on search patrol. He dared not break audio silence to warn the cadets aboard the Polaris, lest he give away the position of the ship. Later, when the radar officer of the Arcturus reported a steady signal over the audioceiver, Strong at first dismissed it as some form of interference from space. But when Titan failed to report the arrival of the Polaris on time, Strong investigated the strange sound. Taking a bearing on the signal, he discovered it came from a position dangerously close to the small Jovian colony of Ganymede. After repeated attempts to raise the Polaris failed, and no distress signals had been received, Strong feared that Bull Coxine had won again. In a desperate effort to catch the criminal, he took repeated bearings on the signal and ordered full emergency space speed toward the small satellite of Jupiter.

Contacting Commander Walters at Space Academy, Strong related his suspicions and received permission to carry out a plan of action.

“I want you to engage the enemy at all costs!” ordered Walters. “Blast his space-crawling hide into protons! That’s an order!”

“Yes, sir!” replied Strong with grim determination. “There’s nothing I’d like better.”

Six hours later Strong received confirmation of his worst fears. He was handed a message that read:

EMERGENCY:

GANYMEDE GARRISON ATTACKED ZERO THREE HUNDRED HOURS BY TWO SHIPS.

ONE VESSEL IDENTIFIED AS ROCKET CRUISER POLARIS. SEND AID

IMMEDIATELY. ENTIRE COLONY AT MERCY OF COXINE. SIGNED, SOMMERS,

MAJOR, SOLAR GUARD.

Strong realized at once that the cadets had been forced to give the recognition code to the pirate. There wasn’t any other way for the pirate to penetrate the defenses of Ganymede. And, thought Strong bitterly, to blast Coxine was to blast the cadets as well. The commander’s words echoed again in his ears, “ ... blast him, Steve! That’s an order!”

Strong turned to his second-in-command. “Man all guns! Stand by to attack under plan S! We’ll engage the enemy as soon as he’s sighted!”

The young officer saluted and turned away quickly. But not before he saw the mist in Steve Strong’s eyes.

Tom, Roger, and Astro watched the incredible scene taking place in front of them with unbelieving eyes. Seven men were standing at rigid attention on the control deck of the Avenger. Wallace, Russell, Attardi, Harris, Shelly, Martin, and Brooks. In front of them, standing equally rigid, Bull Coxine was addressing them in a low restrained voice.

“Raise your right hands and repeat after me.”

The men raised their hands.

“I hereby pledge my life to Bull Coxine!”

“ ... I hereby pledge my life to Bull Coxine...” repeated the men in unison.

“To uphold his decisions, obey his orders, and fulfill his purpose of destroying the Solar Alliance and establishing a new governmental order!”

The seven men repeated the words slowly and hesitantly.

“All right,” said Coxine. “From this day on, you are my chief lieutenants. You will command the ships of my fleet, and when we destroy the power of the Solar Guard and take over the Alliance, you will help me rule our new order.”

The seven men looked at each other, raised a mild cheer, and waited as Coxine shook hands with each of them.

“All right,” said Coxine abruptly as he reached the end of the line. “Get to your ships and prepare for full acceleration. We go into action immediately!”

The men filed from the room silently, each with a worried look on his face. Coxine failed to notice their lack of enthusiasm and turned to the three cadets.

“Some day, boys,” he said, “you’ll go down in history as being the first witnesses to the establishment of the new order.”

Astro glared up at the giant spaceman. “We’ll be the witnesses to the biggest bust in the universe when the Solar Guard catches up with you!”

“Yeah,” drawled Roger in his most casual manner. “You’re the one that’ll go down in history, Coxine, as the biggest space-gassing idiot that ever blasted off!”

Tom suddenly guffawed. Though close to death, he couldn’t help laughing at Roger’s remark. The big spaceman flushed angrily and with the flat of his hand slapped the cadet across the face. Then, he turned to the teleceiver and opened the circuit to all the ships that were standing by in space around the Avenger, the ships of the Ganymede garrison.

“Stand by for acceleration,” he called. “We’re going to show the Solar Alliance who’s boss, beginning right now! I’ll give you the target in a few minutes but head in the direction of Earth!”

He faced the three cadets and sneered. “By the time I’m finished with Luna City, the only thing active will be radioactive!”

Suddenly Gus Wallace could be heard screaming over the teleceiver, his face a mask of fear and panic.

“Bull! Bull!” he shouted. “The Solar Guard! We just spotted them! Squadrons! Heading straight for us! We’ve got to get out of here!”

“What?” roared Coxine, turning to his radar scanner. The blips on the screen verified the alarm. He shouted into the teleceiver, “Man your guns! We’ll wipe them out right now!”

“But, Bull--” whined Wallace. “They’ll blast us out of space!”

Coxine roared into the mike. “The first one of you yellow crawlers that tries to run for it will be blasted by me! Man your guns, I said! This is our big chance! Wipe out the Solar Guard now and the Solar Alliance is ours for the asking! Fight, men! Fight!”

Tom, Roger, and Astro looked at each other, mouths open, not knowing whether they should laugh or not at the dramatic speech of the huge spaceman. But whatever the private feelings of the criminals, Coxine had roused them to fever pitch and the boys could hear them racing through the Avenger, preparing to fight the squadrons of Solar Guard ships bearing down on them.

Coxine strapped himself in the pilot’s chair and began barking orders to his battle stations, whipping his men into action relentlessly.

And then suddenly Captain Strong’s voice, vibrant and firm, came over the audioceiver, demanding the surrender of the pirate captain and his fleet.

“Never!” roared Coxine. “You’ll get my surrender from the barrels of every blaster I have under my command!”

“Then,” replied Strong, “I have no alternative but to attack!”

With a coldness that reached across the void of space and gripped their hearts with icy fingers, the three cadets heard their skipper give his squadrons the deadly order!

“Fire!”

Coxine snapped his order at almost the same instant and the three cadets felt the Avenger shudder as her turrets began blazing away, returning round for round of the deadly atomic missiles.

Racing from scanner to the control panel and back again, Coxine watched the battle rage around him. With speeds nearing that of light, exhaust trails cut scarlet paths through the black space, as the two opposing fleets attacked, counterattacked, and then regrouped to attack again. The rhythm of the blasters on the Avenger had taken on a familiar pattern of five-second intervals between bursts. Gradually, one by one, the pirate ships were hit, demolished or badly damaged, but still they fought on. Coxine, his eyes wild with desperation, now kept lining up ships in his radar sights and firing, with no way of knowing which was friend and which was foe.

Tom, Roger, and Astro watched the dogfight on the scanner in horrified fascination. Never before had they seen such maneuvering, as the giant ships avoided collision sometimes by inches. Once, Tom tore his eyes away from the scanner when he saw a rocket destroyer plow through the escaping swarm of jet boats after one of the pirate ships had been hit.