Chapter 11: Hard Words

The Scorpius could have taken direct hits with little or no major damage from a hundred rockets of the kind Rip had used, but Commander O’Brine took no chances. When the alarm bell signaled that the outer hull had been hit, the commander acted instantly with a bellowed order.

The Planeteers on the asteroid blinked at the speed of the cruiser’s getaway. Fire flamed from the stern tubes for an instant, and then there was nothing but a fading glow where the Scorpius had been.

Rip had a mental image of everything movable in the ship crashing against bulkheads with the terrific acceleration.

And in the same moment, the Consops cruiser reacted. The Connie commander was ready to fire guided missiles, when his target suddenly, mysteriously, blasted into space at optimum acceleration. There was only one reason the Connie could imagine: His cruiser had been spotted. The ambush had failed. It was one thing for the Connie to lie in ambush for a single, deadly surprise blast at the Federation cruiser. It was quite another to face the nuclear drive ship with its missile ports cleared for action. The Connie knew he had lost.

Rip and the Planeteers saw the Consops ship suddenly flame away, then turn and dive for low space below the asteroid belt, in a direction opposite to the one the Scorpius had taken. The Planeteers’ helmet communicators rang with their cheers.

The young officer clapped Santos on the shoulder and exclaimed weakly, “Good shooting!”

The corporal turned anxiously to Koa. “The lieutenant’s pretty weak. Can’t we do something?”

“Forget it,” Rip said. There was nothing anyone could do. He was trapped inside his space suit. There was nothing anyone could do for his wound until he got into air.

Koa untied his safety line and moved to Rip’s side. “Sir, this is dangerous, but there’s just as much danger without it. I’m going to tie off that arm.”

Rip knew what Koa meant. He stood quietly as the big sergeant major put the line around his arm above the wound, then put his massive strength into the task of pulling the line tight.

The heavy fabric of the suit was stiff, and the air pressure gave further resistance that had to be overcome. Rip let most of the air out of the suit, then fought for breath until the pain in his arm told him that Koa had succeeded. He inflated the suit again and thanked the sergeant major weakly.

The tight line stopped the bleeding, but it also cut off the air circulation. Without the air, the heating system couldn’t operate efficiently. It was only a matter of time before the arm froze.

“Stand easy,” Rip told his men. “Nothing to do now but wait. The Scorpius will be back.” He set an example by leaning against the thorium crystal in which the cave was located. It was a natural but rather meaningless gesture. With virtually no gravity pulling at them, they could remain standing almost indefinitely, sleeping upright.

Rip closed his eyes and relaxed. The pain in his arm was less now, and he knew the cold was setting in. He was getting lightheaded, and, most of all, he wanted to sleep. Well, why not? He slumped a little inside the suit.

He awoke with Koa shaking him violently. Rip stood upright and shook his head to clear his vision. “What is it?”

“Sir, the Scorpius has returned.”

Rip blinked as he stared out into space to where Koa was pointing. He had trouble focusing his eyes at first, and then he saw the glow of the cruiser.

“Good,” he said. “They’ll send a landing boat first thing.”

“I hope so,” Koa replied.

Rip wanted to ask why the big Planeteer was dubious, but he was too tired to phrase the question. He contented himself with watching the cruiser.

In a short time the Scorpius was balanced, with nose tubes counteracting the thrust of stern tubes, ready to flash into space again at a second’s notice.

Rip watched, puzzled. The cruiser was miles away. Why didn’t it come any closer? Then suddenly it erupted a dozen fiery streaks.

“Snapper-boats!” someone gasped.

Rip jerked fully awake. In the ruddy glow of the fighting rockets’ tubes, he had seen that the cruiser’s missile ports were yawning wide, ready to spew forth their deadly nuclear charges in an instant.

The snapper-boats flashed toward the asteroid in a group, sheered off, and broke formation. They came back in pairs, streaking space with the sparks of their exhausts.

“Into the cave,” Koa shouted.

The Planeteers obeyed instantly. Koa took Rip’s arm to lead him inside, but the young officer shook him off. “No, Koa. I’ll take my chances out here. I want to see what they’re up to.”

“Great Cosmos, sir! They’ll go over this rock like Martian beetles. You’ll get it, for sure.”

“Get inside,” Rip ordered. He gathered strength enough to make his voice firm. “I’m staying here until I figure out some way to call them off. We can’t just stand here and let them blast us. They’re our own men.”

“Then I’m staying, too,” Koa stated.

A pair of snapper-boats flashed overhead and vanished below the horizon. Two more swept past from another direction.

Rip watched, curious. What were they up to? Another pair quartered past them at high speed, then two more. The boats seemed to be crisscrossing the asteroid in a definite pattern.

A pair streaked past, and something sped downward from one of them, trailing yellow flame. It exploded in a ball of molten fire that licked across the asteroid in waves. Rip tensed, then saw that the chemical would burn out before it reached them.

“Fire bomb,” Koa muttered.

Rip nodded. He had recognized it. The Planeteers were trained in the use of fire bombs, tanks of chemicals that burned even in an airless world. They were equipped with simple jets for use in space.

The snapper-boats drew off, back toward the Scorpius. Rip watched, searching for some reason for their actions. Then one of the boats pulled away from the others. It returned to the asteroid, with stern jet burning fitfully.

“Is he landing?” Koa asked.

Rip didn’t know. The snapper-boat was moving slowly enough to make a landing.

Directly above the asteroid it changed direction, circled, and returned over their heads. Rip could almost have picked it off with a pistol shot. Santos could have blasted it into space dust with one rocket.

The snapper-boat changed direction, and for a fraction of a second stern and side tubes “fought” each other, making the boat yaw wildly. Then it straightened out on a new course.

Koa exclaimed, “That’s a drone!”

Rip got it then. A pilotless snapper-boat! That’s why its actions were a little uneven. Only one thing could explain its deliberate slowness. It was bait. The Scorpius had sent piloted snapper-boats over the asteroid at high speed, crisscrossing in order to cover the thorium world completely, expecting to have the unknown rocketeer fire at them. Then a fire bomb had been dropped as a further means of getting the asteroid to fire. But no rockets had been fired from the asteroid, so the pilot in control of the drone had sent it at low speed, a perfect target.

That meant O’Brine wasn’t sure of what was going on. He must have seen the blip on his screen as the Connie cruiser flamed off, Kip reasoned. But the commander probably suspected that the Connies had overcome the Planeteers and were in control of the asteroid. He had sent the snapper-boats to try to draw fire, in an attempt to find out more surely whether Planeteers or Connies had the thorium rock.

“The Scorpius doesn’t know what’s going on,” Rip told his Planeteers. “O’Brine didn’t know the cruiser was waiting to ambush him, so the rocket we fired made him think the Connies had taken us over.”

He put himself in O’Brine’s place. What would his next step be? The snapper-boats hadn’t drawn fire, even when a drone was sent over at low speed. The next thing would be to send a piloted boat over slowly enough to take a look.

Rip hoped O’Brine would hurry. There was no longer any feeling in his arm below Koa’s safety line. That meant the arm had frozen. He had to get medical attention from the Scorpius pretty soon.

He gritted his teeth. At least he was no longer losing blood. He wasn’t getting any weaker. But every now and then his vision fogged, and he had to shake his head to clear it.

The pilotless snapper-boat made another slow run, then put on speed and flashed back to the group of boats near the cruiser. Another boat detached itself from the squadron and moved toward the asteroid.

Rip wished for a communicator powerful enough to reach the Scorpius, but he knew it was useless to try with his helmet circuit. The carrier waves of the snapper-boats were on the same frequency, and they would smother the faint signal from his bubble.

But the boats might be able to hear if they got close enough! He had a swift memory of the communications circuits. The pilots were plugged into their boat communicators. If a boat got near enough, he could turn up his bubble to full volume and yell. Not only would the boat pilot hear him, but also his voice would go through the pilot’s circuit and be heard in the ship!

Rip grabbed Koa’s arm. “Let’s move away from the cave a little farther.”

The two of them stepped away from the cave and stood in full view as the snapper-boat moved cautiously down toward the asteroid. Rip planned what he would say. “Commander O’Brine, this is Foster!”