Danger in Deep Space by Carey Rockwell (novel24 TXT) π
The Polaris unit was well known among other cadet units, and they were greeted heartily from all sides. As Astro and Roger joked with various cadet units, forming up in front of the slidestairs leading down to the mess halls, Alfie turned to take a slidestairs going up. Suddenly he stopped, grabbed Tom by the shoulders, and whispered in his ear. Just as abruptly he turned and raced up the ascending slidestairs.
"What was that about?" asked Roger, as Tom stood staring after the little cadet.
"Roger--he--he said our next assignment would be one of the great experiments in space history. Something to be done that--that hasn't ever been done before!"
"Well, blast my jets!" said Astro. "What do you suppose it is?"
"Ahhh," sneered Roger, "I'll bet it's nothing more than takin
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Roger didn't answer. He turned away and climbed back to the radar bridge. Loring followed him up the ladder.
"Don't get any ideas about warning your buddies, Manning, 'cause if you do, I'll blast you before I blast them!"
"Don't worry," replied Roger. "It's daytime on the other side of Tara now, where the Polaris is. The crew might be out on a scouting mission or making observations away from the ship. There's less chance of their being on the ship. If we're going to do it, let's get it over with!"
"O.K. with me," said Loring. "Take this wagon up toward Alpha Centauri a little way. Coming out of the sun, they won't see us. We'll use one of the jet boats to deliver our little present. I'll set the fuse, put the jet boat on automatic, and aim it right for the Polaris."
"All right," agreed Manning reluctantly. He turned to the chart table, plotted a course, and issued orders to Shinny at the controls and to Mason on the power deck. Soon the Space Devil was blasting away from the night side of the planet, heading toward the sun. When they reached an altitude of a thousand miles above the surface of the planet, Loring maneuvered the jet boat into position outside the ship and placed the crude reactant bomb inside. Ready, he gave Roger the signal to make the run out of the sun toward the Polaris. Roger relayed the orders to Shinny and Mason, and the Space Devil rocketed back toward the planet again.
Loring, sitting inside the jet boat, waited until they had reached an altitude of five hundred miles.
"All right, Manning," said Loring, "give me the course!"
Roger calculated the rotational speed of the planet, the Space Devil's altitude, and the speed of the jet boat. He drew a line between the Space Devil and Polaris, checked it on the astro compass, and reached for the intercom mike. He ran a dry tongue over his lips and called out the course.
"Course is one forty-threeβ" He caught himself and stared at the chart. Suppose Tom or Astro or anyone was near the ship? Even if he missed by several hundred yards, the bomb would certainly be fatal. If he only changed the course one degree, at a range of five hundred miles, it would miss the Polaris by several miles. And Loring wouldn't be able to see anything because of the dust cloud.
"Course corrected," said Roger. "New course is one forty-two!"
"One forty-two!" repeated Loring.
Roger sat back and waited for the small space craft to blast off from the ship. In his mind, he saw Loring setting the trigger on the bomb, adjusting the controls, setting the automatic pilot, and then pressing the acceleration button. Roger gripped the sides of the chart table and stared at the radar scanner. A fast-moving blip was streaking across its surface. Loring had started the jet boat.
His eyes showing his great fear, Roger watched the blip as it sped down like a maddened hornet toward the Polaris resting on its directional fins in the green jungle. He could hear the hatch slam closed below as Loring re-entered the ship, but he continued to watch the rapidly moving blip.
Suddenly it disappeared, and Roger knew it had reached Tara. He slumped back in his chair. His eyes were glassy, his ears deaf to the roar of triumph from below as Loring and Mason, watching the flight of the jet boat on the control deck teleceiver screen, saw it explode. Roger couldn't move. He had fired a reactant bomb at Tom and Astro.
"By the craters of Luna," roared Connel, "we've been attacked!"
The four Earthmen, exploring a valley several miles north of the Polaris, had been thrown to the ground when the bomb landed. Connel's reaction was immediate and decisive.
"Get into the jet boat! All of you! We've got to get back to the Polaris! If our ship is smashed, we'll spend the rest of our lives fighting this jungle!"
In a matter of seconds the four spacemen were rocketing over the jungle toward the Polaris. Presently they came to an enormous dust cloud that had mushroomed out over the trees. It was so thick Tom found it difficult to pilot the small craft.
"Any danger of radioactivity in this dust, sir?" asked Astro.
"Always that possibility, Astro," answered Connel. "We'll know soon enough!" He flipped on a built-in Geiger counter on the dashboard of the jet boat, and immediately the cabin was filled with a loud ticking that warned of danger.
"The count is up to seven fifty, sir," said Astro. "Not enough to bother you unless you're in it a long time."
"There's the Polaris, sir," yelled Tom. "She's still on her directional fins! They missed her! She's O.K.!"
"By the blessed rings of Saturn, she is!" exclaimed Connel. "Go on, Tom, give this baby the gun! If we have to die, let's die like spacemen, in space, fighting with spaceman's weapons, not crawling around here in the jungle like worms!"
The three boys smiled at their skipper's rousing statement. "This is the time," thought Tom, "when I'd rather have Major Connel in command than anyone else in the Solar Guard." If there was to be a fight, then they certainly had found the man who knew how to do just that! Fight!
Tom swooped over the treetops recklessly, and fearing the blast had damaged the jet-boat air lock, brought the small craft to rest in the blinding dust a few yards away from the Polaris.
Three minutes later the four spacemen had separated and were standing by their respective posts. Hasty but thorough checks were made to determine the damage, and finding none, they prepared to raise ship.
"All clear forward and up," Alfie reported in a high squeaking voice.
"Energize the cooling pumps," shouted Tom.
Astro had already started the mighty pumps, their vibrations rocking the ship, and Tom began counting the seconds.
"Stand by to raise ship. Minus fiveβfourβthreeβtwoβoneβzeeroooooo!"
Paying scant attention to the crush of sudden acceleration, Tom gave the ship all the power she could take for the climb out of Tara's atmosphere, and soon they were rocketing through the airless void of space. Alfie and Connel hurriedly swept the area with the radar scanner for the attacking intruder.
"There she is!" roared Connel. "There!" He placed a finger on a white blip on the scanner. "By the craters of Luna, that's an Earth ship!" The fear of an outer-space invasion by hostile people from another world had been in the back of his mind, but he had been reluctant to voice his fears in front of the cadets. "And she's an old one at that!" he exclaimed. "Not even armed. I know that class vessel. Corbett!" he shouted.
"Aye, aye, sir," replied Tom.
"Put the ship on automatic flight, attack-approach pattern number three. Then stand by to send a message to whoever's manning that ship!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Tom. He hurriedly set the delicate device that would fly the ship in a preplanned course of zigzag maneuvers and opened the circuits of the teleceivers.
"All set for the message, sir," reported Tom.
"Tell them," said Connel heavily, his voice cold, "whoever they are, that I'll give them two minutes to surrender. If they don't, I'll blast them into protons!"
"Very well, sir," said Tom. He turned to the teleceiver and began twirling the dials.
"Attention! Attention! Rocket cruiser Polaris to spaceship X. Polaris to spaceship X. You are ordered to surrender within two minutes or we will attack. By order of Major Connel, Senior Line Officer, Solar Guard."
He switched the teleceiver for reception and waited. In a moment the screen blurred and then an image appeared. Tom gasped. It was Roger!
"Tom, Tom," yelled Roger. "Tom, this is meβRoger!"
"Roger! What're you doing out here? How'd you get here?"
"I can't explain now," said Roger. "IβIβ"
Tom interrupted him. "Roger, you've been cleared! The investigation of the crash on the station proved that Loring and Mason are guilty. They're wanted for the crash and the deaths of Jardine and Bangs!"
"What! You meanβ" stammered Roger.
"Yes. Loring and Mason did the whole thing!" supplied Tom.
"Look, Tom," pleaded Roger, "give me ten minutes. Don't fire for ten minutes! I'm going to try an idea. If I'm not successful, then open up and blast us back to Mars!"
"Roger, wait!" shouted Tom. "What's going on? What're you doing on that ship?"
"I can't talk now," answered Roger. "Loring and Mason are on the ship with me. Rememberβten minutesβand if I don't contact you, then open fire!"
CHAPTER 13Roger flipped off the teleceiver. He stared at the darkened screen and began estimating the chances of success for a plan he had in mind. Deciding that, regardless of what happened, he had to take over the ship, he got up and turned toward the hatch and the gun locker. He stopped cold. Loring stood framed in the doorway, a paralo-ray gun in each hand.
"Just stand right where you are, spaceboy!" snapped Loring. "You want ten minutes, huh? Ten minutes for what? I thought there was something funny going on when we missed the Polaris with that bomb!"
"You knew all along I didn't have anything to do with that crash back on the station, didn't you?" shouted Roger. His eyes blazed angrily.
"Yeah. So what?" growled Loring. "Hey, Mason," he yelled over his shoulder, "get up here in a hurry! We gotta work fast!"
"What are you going to do?" asked Roger.
"You're still valuable to us, Manning," said Loring with a crooked grin. "You're going to ensure our getting what we came after!"
Mason stepped through the door. "Yeah, Loring?"
Loring quickly told him of Roger's attempt to work with Connel.
"Take our spaceboy down below and lock him in a storage compartment." He handed over one of the paralo-ray guns, and Mason shoved the muzzle into Roger's stomach.
"Get moving, Manning!" he snarled. "I'd like nothing better than to let you have it right now!"
Roger smiled, knowing Mason still harbored a grudge for the beating he had taken earlier on the trip.
"When you have him locked up, get back on the control deck," said Loring. "We're going to do some old-fashioned bargaining with 'Blast-off' Connel!"
"Bargaining?" exclaimed Roger.
"Yeah! One slightly used Space Cadet for what we came afterβthe copper satellite!"
"Connel won't bargain," said Roger. "Not for me, not for anything. You don't know him!"
"I know this, Manning!" said Loring. "I'm going to get on the teleceiver and tell Connel that if he doesn't blast away from here right now, you're a dead Space Cadet!" He jerked his head toward the door. "All right, take him below and tell Shinny to stand by on the power deck. In case Connel won't bargain, we'll have to make a run for it!"
"Right," said Mason as he shoved the paralo-ray gun deeper into Roger's stomach. "Move, Manning!"
Roger climbed down the ladder and through the long passageway of the Space Devil. He passed Shinny on the way down.
"What's going on here?" demanded Shinny, seeing Mason with the paralo-ray gun.
"We missed with the bomb," said Mason, "and Connel raised ship. He's ready to blast us if we don't surrender right away. Loring's trying to make a deal with him."
"What kind of a deal?" asked Shinny.
"Hot-shot Manning for the satellite!"
"He hasn't told you everything, Mr. Shinny," said Roger in his casual drawl. "They are the ones who caused the crash of the Annie Jones and the deaths of Jardine and Bangs. They framed me!"
"Then," mused Shinny, "you're cleared?"
"Yeah," growled Mason, "he's cleared! Cleared for a long swim in space if Connel doesn't do what Loring tells him! Get in there!" Mason shoved Roger into the cramped storage
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