Suddenly the three cadets saw the outline of a rocket cruiser bearing down on them. The white blip on the scanner came closer and closer to the heart of the scanner. Just in time Coxine saw it and shouted for a course change. But even as the Avenger swung up and away from the attacking ship, the cadets saw the flash of flame from the cruiser’s turrets and a moment later felt the bone-rattling shudder of a near miss.
The control deck suddenly filled with smoke. A flash fire broke out in the control panel and the circuits sparked and flared. Tom was thrown across the room and Roger landed on top of him.
“Up ninety degrees! Full starboard thrust!” roared Coxine into the intercom. “Hurry, you space crawlers! We’ve got to get out of here!”
Tom quickly realized that in the smoke and confusion Coxine couldn’t possibly direct the ship back into the fight. There was only one explanation. He was deserting his fleet and trying to escape.
And then, over the noise and confusion, Tom could hear the sound of struggling bodies and Coxine muttering an oath between his teeth.
“I’ll break you in two, you blasted space rat!”
There were more sounds of struggle, and Tom and Roger heard Astro’s voice replying grimly:
“Do it and then talk about it, big shot!”
Slowly the smoke cleared from the control deck and Tom and Roger strained their eyes to see through the thick cloud. There, in front of them, stood Astro, torn strands of rope dangling from his arms, in mortal combat with Coxine. The two giants were holding each other’s wrists, their feet spread wide, legs braced, grimacing faces an inch apart, struggling to throw each other off balance.
Tom and Roger watched the two huge spacemen brace against each other, muscles straining and faces turning a slow red as they tried to force the other’s hands back. Suddenly, with the speed of a cat, Coxine stuck out his leg and kicked Astro’s foot from the deck, tripping him. Astro tumbled to the deck. In a flash, the pirate was on top of him, gripping him by the throat. The Venusian grabbed at the hands that were slowly choking the life out of him and pulled at the fingers, his face turning slowly from the angry flush of a moment before to the dark-gray hue of impending death!
Still bound and tied by the heavy rope, the two cadets on the deck were helpless, as Astro’s strength slipped from his body.
Tom turned to Roger desperately. “We’ve got to do something!”
“What? I can’t get loose!” The blond-haired cadet struggled against the ropes until the blood ran down his wrists, but it was a hopeless effort.
“Yell!” said Tom desperately. “Yell! Make a noise! Holler like you’ve never hollered before!”
“Yell?” asked Roger stupidly.
“We’ve got to distract him!”
Tom began to bellow, and immediately was echoed by Roger. They shouted and screamed. They kicked their feet on the deck and tore against their bonds.
Astro’s hands no longer fought the powerful fingers taking his life. There was no strength in the cadet’s hands now, but in the split second that Coxine turned to look at Tom and Roger, he gave a mighty heave with the last of his great strength and tore free of the pirate’s grasp.
The Venusian jumped up and ran to the farthest corner of the control deck, gasping for breath. Coxine rushed after him, but Astro eluded him and stumbled to the opposite end of the control room, still trying to suck the life-giving breath into his screaming lungs. Slowly his strength returned.
Coxine made another headlong rush for the cadet, but this time Astro did not attempt to get away. He stood squarely to meet the charge and his right fist caught the pirate flush on the chin. Coxine staggered back, eyes wide with surprise. In an instant Astro was on him, pounding his mighty fists into the pirate’s stomach and any place he could find an opening. Roaring like a wild animal, the cadet no longer fought for the honor of the Solar Guard or his friends. He didn’t look upon the criminal in front of him as Coxine the pirate, but as a man who had nearly taken his life, and he fought with the ferocity of a man who wanted to live.
Again and again, Tom and Roger saw their unit-mate pound straight, powerful, jolting lefts and rights into the pirate’s mid-section until they thought he would put his fist completely through the man’s body.
Just as Coxine looked as if he would fall, he suddenly charged in again. But his powerful strength restored, Astro stepped back and waited for an opening. Coxine threw a whistling right for Astro’s head. The Venusian ducked, shifting his weight slightly, and drove his right squarely into the pirate’s face. His eyes suddenly glassy and vacant, Bull Coxine sank to the deck, out cold.
Breathing heavily, the cadet turned, wiped his face, and smiled crookedly at Tom and Roger.
“If I ever have to fight another man like that again,” gasped Astro as he loosened the ropes around his unit-mates, “I want to have both fists dipped in lead before I begin!”
He held up his hands. There was not a bit of flesh remaining on his knuckles.
As soon as Tom was free he grabbed the pirate’s paralo-ray gun. “We’d better tie this crawler up!” he shouted.
“We’ll do that,” said Roger. “You try to figure out how we’re going to get off this ship!”
Suddenly, behind them, the hatch burst open and Captain Strong rushed into the room, followed by a dozen armed guardsmen.
“Captain Strong!” yelled the three cadets together.
The young captain’s face lighted up with a smile. He rushed over to Tom and grabbed him by the hand, then turned to where Roger and Astro were tying up Coxine.
Strong pointed his gun at the fallen pirate. “What happened to him?”
Roger smiled and nodded toward Astro. “Coxine told Astro he reminded him of an ox he saw at a zoo once on Venus. Astro got mad—” Roger shrugged his shoulders. “Poor Coxine, he didn’t have a chance!”
Astro blushed and looked up at Strong. “Never mind us, sir,” said the big cadet. “How did you get here!”
Strong told them of having picked up the beacon signal. “That was quick thinking, boys,” he said. “It was the end of Coxine. If we hadn’t stopped him now—” Strong shook his head.
“But how did you get aboard the Avenger, sir?” asked Tom.
“This was the only ship that wasn’t a Solar Guard fleet vessel, so it was easy to spot. We captured the Polaris right off the bat, and after we searched it, figured you three were either dead, or aboard this one. I gave the order not to fire on you, since we wiped out Coxine’s fleet before he could do any real damage. When we saw you accelerating, after that last near miss—which incidentally was intended to miss you—we came alongside, forced the air lock open, and took over.”
“But didn’t the crew offer any resistance?” asked Roger.
“No, and from the story they tell me about Coxine wanting to establish a new order, or something like that, they were glad to surrender. They think he’s crazy.”
When the enlisted men carried Coxine, still unconscious, off the control deck, the three members of the Polaris unit and their skipper watched him leave silently. All of them realized how close the Solar Alliance had come to destruction at the hands of the insane pirate. Finally Strong turned to his crew of cadets.
“Well, boys,” he said wearily, “we’ve recovered the adjustable light-key and captured Coxine. I guess that finishes the space pirates!”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom quietly. “And this sure teaches me a lesson.”
“What’s that?” said Strong.
“Never to think that being a Space Cadet is a matter of learning something from a story spool. Being a Space Cadet is like being—” He stopped. “Like nothing in the universe!”
NEXT UP: TOM CORBET #4
(originally published in 1953)
THE SPACE PIONEERS
CHAPTER 1
“Go on, Astro,” shouted the young Space Cadet. “Boot that screwy ball with everything you’ve got!”
The three cadets of the Polaris unit raced down the Academy field t
oward the mercuryball, a plastic sphere with a vial of mercury inside. At the opposite end of the field, three members of the Arcturus unit ran headlong in a desperate effort to reach the ball first.
Astro, the giant Space Cadet from Venus, charged toward the ball like a blazing rocket, while his two unit mates flanked him, ready to block out their opponents and give Astro a clear shot at the ball.
On the left wing, Tom Corbett, curly-haired and snub-nosed, ran lightly down the field, while on the opposite wing, Roger Manning, his blond hair cut crew style, kept pace with him easily. The two teams closed. Roger threw a perfect block on his opposing wingman and the two boys went down in a heap. Tom side-stepped the Arcturus cadet on his side and sent him sprawling to the ground. He quickly cut across the field and threw his body headlong at the last remaining member of the opposition. Astro was free to kick the ball perfectly for a fifty-yard goal.
Jogging back toward their own goal line, the three Polaris cadets congratulated each other. Astro’s kick had tied the score, two-all.
“That was some feint you pulled on Richards, Tom,” said Roger. “You sucked him in beautifully. I thought he was going to tear up the field with his nose!”
Tom grinned. Compliments from Roger were few and far between.
Astro clapped his hands together and roared, “All right, fellas, let’s see if we can’t take these space bums again! Another shot at the goal—that’s all I need!”
Lining up at the end of the field again, the cadets kept their eyes on the cadet referee on the side lines. They saw him hold up his hand and then drop it suddenly. Once again the teams raced toward the ball in the middle of the field. When they met, Roger tried to duplicate Tom’s feat and feint his opponent, but the other cadet was ready for the maneuver and stopped dead in his tracks. Roger was forced to break stride just long enough for the Arcturus cadet to dump him to the ground and then race for Astro. Tom, covering Astro on the left wing, saw the cadet sweeping in and lunged in a desperate attempt to stop him. But he missed, leaving Astro unprotected against the three members of the Arcturus unit. With his defense gone, Astro kicked at the ball frantically but just grazed the side of it. The mercury inside the ball began to play its role in the game, and as though it had a brain of its own, the ball spun, stopped, bounced, and spiraled in every direction, with the cadets kicking, lunging, and scrambling for a clean shot. Finally Astro reached the tumbling sphere and booted it away from the group. There was a roar of laughter from the Arcturus unit and a low groan from Tom and Roger. Astro saw that he had kicked the ball over his own goal line.
“Why, you clobber-headed Venusian hick!” yelled Roger. “Can’t you tell the difference between our goal and theirs?”
Astro grinned sheepishly as the three jogged back to their own goal to line up once more.
“Lay off, Roger,” said Tom. “How come you didn’t get Richards on that play?”
“I slipped,” replied the blond cadet.
“Yeah, you slipped all right,” growled Astro good-naturedly, “with a great big assist from Richards.”
“Ah, go blast your jets,” grumbled Roger. “Come on! Let’s show those space crawlers what this game is all about!”
But before the cadet referee could drop his hand, a powerful, low-slung jet car, its exhaust howling, pulled to a screeching stop at the edge of the field and a scarlet-clad enlisted Solar Guardsman jumped out and spoke to him. Sensing that it was something important, the two teams jogged over to surround the messenger.
“What’s up, Joe?” asked Roger.
The enlisted spaceman, an Earthworm cadet who had washed out of the Academy but had re-enlisted in the Solar Guard, smiled. “Orders for the Polaris unit,” he said, “from Captain Strong.”
“What about?” asked Roger.
“Report on the double for new assignments,” replied the guardsman.
“Yeeeeooooow!” Astro roared in jubilation. “At last we can get out of here. I’ve been doing so blamed much classroom work, I’ve forgotten what space looks like.”
“Know where we’re going, Joe?” asked Tom.
“Uh-uh.” Joe shook his head. He turned away, then stopped, and called back, “Want a lift back to the Tower?”
Before Tom could answer, Richards, the captain of the Arcturus unit spoke up. “How about finishing the game, Tom? It’s been so long since we’ve had such good competition we hate to lose you. Come on. Only a few more minutes.”
Tom hesitated. It had been a long time since the two units had played together, but orders were orders. He looked at Roger and Astro. “Well, what about it?”
“Sure,” said Roger. “We’ll wipe up these space jokers in nothing flat! Come on!”
There was a mock yell of anger from the Arcturus unit and the two teams raced back to their starting positions. In the remaining minutes of play, the cadets played hard and rough. First one team would score and then the other. A sizable crowd of cadets had gathered to watch the game and cheered lustily as the players tore up and down the field. Finally, when both teams were nearly exhausted, the game was over and the score was eight to seven in favor of the Polaris unit. Roger had made the final point after Tony Richards had left the game with a badly bruised hip. A substitute called in from the bystanders, an Earthworm cadet, had eagerly joined the Arcturus team for the last minutes of play but had been hopelessly outclassed by the teamwork of the Polaris unit.
Promising a return match soon, Roger, Tom, and Astro hurried to their lockers, showered, and dressed in their senior cadet uniforms of vivid blue, then raced to the nearest slidewalk to head toward the main group of buildings that made up Space Academy.
Whisked along on the moving belt of plastic that formed the principle method of transportation in and around the Academy grounds, Tom turned to his unit mates. “What do you think it’ll be?” he asked.
“You mean the assignment?” asked Roger, answering his own question in the next breath. “I don’t know. But anything to get out of here. I’ve been on Earth so long that I’m getting gravity-itis!”
Tom smiled. “It’ll sure be nice to get up in the wide, high, and deep again,” he said, glancing up at the cloudless sky.
“Say it again, spaceman,” breathed Astro. “One more lesson on the differential potential between chemical-burning rocket fuels and reactant energy and I’ll blast off without a spaceship!”
Roger and Tom laughed. They both sympathized with the big cadet’s inability to cope with the theory of atomic energy and fuel conservation in spaceships. In charge of the power deck on the Polaris, Astro earlier had gained firsthand experience in commercial rocket ships as an able spaceman and later had been accepted in the Academy for cadet training. The son of colonists on Venus, the misty planet, his formal education was limited, and though he had no equal while on the power deck of a rocket ship, in theory and classroom study he had to depend on Roger and Tom to help him get passing grades.
The slidewalk moved smoothly and easily toward the gleaming Tower of Galileo, the largest and most imposing of the structures of Space Academy. Made entirely of clear crystal mined on Titan, satellite of Saturn, the Tower rose over the smaller buildings like a giant shimmering jewel. Housing the administration offices of the Solar Guard and the Space Academy staff, it also contained Galaxy Hall, the museum of space, which attracted thousands of visitors from every part of the Solar Alliance.
Tom Corbett, his eyes caressing the magnificent gleaming Tower, remembered the first time he had seen it. While it hadn’t been so long in months or years since becoming a Space Cadet, it seemed as though he had been at the Academy all of his life and that it was his home. In the struggle to develop into a well-knit dependable rocket team, composed of an astrogator, power-deck cadet, and a command cadet, Tom had assumed the leadership of the unit, and the relationship between Astro, Roger Manning, and himself had ripened until they were more like brothers than three young men who had grown up millions of miles apart.
As they rode toward the Tower, t
he three cadets could see the green-clad first-year Earthworms getting their first taste of cadet life--hours of close-order formations and drills. The nearer they came to the Tower, the more intense and colorful became the activity as the crisscrossing slidewalks carried enlisted guardsmen in their red uniforms, and the officers of the Solar Guard in magnificent black and gold, across the quadrangle to the various dormitories, laboratories, lecture rooms, mess halls, and research rooms. Space Academy was a beehive of activity, with the education of thousands of cadets and the operational mechanics of the Solar Guard going on incessantly, day and night, never stopping in its avowed task of defending the liberties of the planets, safeguarding the freedom of space, and upholding the cause of peace throughout the universe.
As their slidewalk glided over the quadrangle, Roger suddenly turned to his unit mates. “Think we might get assigned to that radar project they’re setting up on the Moon?” he asked. “I have a few ideas—”
Tom laughed. “He can’t wait until he gets his hands on that new scanner Dr. Dale just finished, Astro,” he said with a wink.
The big Venusian snorted. “Can you imagine the ego of that guy? Dr. Dale spends almost a year building that thing, with the help of the leading electronic scientists in the Alliance, and he can’t wait to tell them about a few of his ideas!”
“I didn’t mean that,” complained Roger. “All I said was—”
“You don’t have to say a word, hot-shot,” interrupted Astro. “I can read your thoughts as though they were flashed on a stereo screen!”
“Oh, yeah!” growled Roger. “You should be that telepathic for your exams. Why didn’t you read my thoughts when I beat my brains out trying to explain that thrust problem the other night?” He turned to Tom, shrugging his shoulders in mock despair. “Honestly, Tom, if I didn’t know that he was the best power jockey in the Academy, I’d say he was the dumbest thing to leave Venus, including the dinosaurs in the Academy Zoo!”
With a hamlike hand Astro suddenly grabbed for Roger’s neck, but the wiry cadet dashed along the slidewalk out of reach and the big Venusian rumbled after him. Tom roared with laughter.
The Tom Corbett Space Cadet Megapack: 10 Classic Young Adult Sci-Fi Novels Page 52