“Why should we break our backs loading the ship?” sneered Miles. “Let them carry it out for us.”
“All right, release them,” agreed Brett. “But get that stuff loaded in a hurry. Walters is either getting suspicious or he’s pulling a bluff. We can’t take any more chances.”
Miles flipped on the neutralizer switch of the paralo ray and leveled it at Tom. “We’ll take the little fella first,” he said. “If he acts up, we’ll just leave the other fella the way he is.”
He fired at Tom, and the young cadet began to shudder violently. His teeth chattered and he found it difficult to focus his eyes as his nervous system tried to shake off the effects of the ray. He crumpled to a heap on the balcony floor and gasped for breath.
“He won’t be much use to you for a while.” Brett laughed. “Look at him flopping around like a fish out of water.”
“Get up!” snarled Miles at Tom, quickly flipping the ray gun back to positive charge. “Come on. You’re not that bad off. Get up.” He leaned over and prodded the cadet with the gun. “If you don’t get up, I’ll freeze you again,” he threatened.
Tom struggled to his feet. “I’ll get you for this, Miles,” he gasped weakly, his teeth still chattering.
“Never mind the hot air!” snarled Brett. “Go down there and start hauling up those boxes.”
Tom turned helplessly and stumbled down the stairs to the floor of the cavern.
“Now for the big fellow,” said Miles. He fired the neutralizer charge and Astro started to quiver at the shock of the release. But he clamped his teeth together and made a quick lunge for Miles, reaching for the spaceman’s throat. Expecting the attack, Miles stepped aside quickly and brought the gun down sharply on the big cadet’s head. Astro dropped to the floor, half-stunned. The black-clad spaceman leveled the ray gun and sneered, “Try that again, you overgrown punk, and I’ll drop you on your head.”
Astro shook his head and stumbled to his feet. He glared at Miles, spun away, and walked down the stairs shakily.
Miles and Brett stood on the balcony and watched the two cadets working on the cavern floor. “Hurry it up there!” shouted Miles. “We haven’t got all day.”
Brett took his ray gun from his belt and stepped forward. “I’ll handle Corbett,” he said. “You take care of the big one.”
“Right,” replied Miles. “But stay well in back of them and keep your gun on them all the time.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to get the ship loaded?” asked Brett.
“Couple of hours. But what are you going to do about Walters if he’s wise?” Miles shrugged his shoulders.
“Simple,” said Brett. “We take the stuff we’ve got, haul it to the hide-out, dump it, and return to Atom City. Then we just sit tight and wait until the situation clears up here on Titan.”
“What about that investigation?” asked Miles, keeping his eyes on the cadets, who were now staggering back to the stairs, each carrying a heavy lead box containing the precious uranium pitchblende.
“What can an investigation prove?” snorted Brett.
“I don’t know. Walters and Strong are pretty smart cookies.”
“Unless they have witnesses that you were messing around Kit Barnard’s ship, which they don’t, and unless they find out about Ross, which they won’t, there isn’t anything they can do.”
Miles looked down at the shorter man beside him. “Ross, eh?” He laughed.
Brett stared at him and then shrugged. “I always get mixed up,” he said. “But you know what I mean.”
“Sure, I know.” Miles turned to watch Astro and Tom start up the stairs to the balcony, the lead boxes on their shoulders. “What are you going to do with them?” he said.
“Take them to the hide-out and decide later. Besides, they’ll be handy for unloading the ship.”
“Good idea,” nodded Miles. He took a deep breath and smiled. “I sure wish I could see Walters’ face when he learns about the new load of uranium that’ll flood the market.”
Brett laughed. “Yeah, and with the customs clearance we’ll get to haul in the crystal, there’ll be no way they can figure out how it’s getting in.”
Miles turned and shouted at the two cadets struggling up the stairs. “Come on, you two. Get a move on.”
“We’re making it as fast as we can, Miles,” Astro protested.
“It ain’t fast enough,” sneered the spaceman. He reached out with his free hand and slapped Astro across the mouth. “That’s just to remind you to watch your tongue, or you might wind up an icicle again.”
Astro dropped the box and crouched, his big frame ready to be released like a coiled spring. Miles backed up and fingered the trigger on the ray gun. “Come on, stupid,” he snarled. “Come on, I’ll give it to you again, only this time—” He smiled.
“No, Astro,” called Tom. “There’s nothing we can do now. No use getting frozen again.”
“That’s using your head, Corbett.” Miles laughed. “Pick up that box and get going.”
Astro picked up the lead box again and staggered after Tom toward the door. Miles and Brett stepped back, guns ready, and watched the two cadets walk slowly ahead of them into the tunnel.
* * * *
Captain Strong and Sergeant Morgan crept to the side of the warehouse and flattened themselves against the wall. With the gas swirling around them thicker than ever, they found it more difficult than ever to see where they were going.
“I think I see a door ahead,” said Strong.
“Want me to see if it’ll open, sir?” asked Morgan.
“No. I’ll look around in the warehouse,” replied the Solar Guard captain. “You investigate the ship. If anyone’s aboard, keep him there until I contact you. If not, come back here and wait for me.”
“Very well, sir,” said Morgan, and turned toward the black ship. In a moment he was lost in the deadly mist.
Strong made his way to the door and twisted the latch. The door slid open easily, and he stepped inside, closing it behind him and waiting for some signs of life or movement. The gas was like a thick fog in the room and he inched his way forward, hands outstretched like a blind person. Gradually he began to see the vague form of a door on the opposite wall and he made his way toward it, completely unaware that he came within inches of falling through the open trap door in the floor.
He opened the door in the wall slowly, peering inside cautiously. He was startled to feel the faint rush of air on his hands and to see the room clear of the dangerous methane ammonia gas. He moved quickly inside and made a hurried inspection of the gear, not bothering to look to examine it closely. He shrugged his shoulders. It was just as Morgan had said. An abandoned warehouse with old mining gear and nothing else.
Suddenly he stopped. There was something strange about the room and he looked around again. The gas! There were no ammonia vapors in the room. He quickly searched along the walls for some outlet of oxygen, remembering now the rush of air he had felt as he opened the door. Close to a corner near the door, he found a small opening. Air poured out of it in a steady rush. He straightened up, his face grim. “So that’s it,” he said to himself. “Somebody has been sucking off oxygen from the main pumps!”
Strong headed for the door. “But why?” he asked himself. “Why in this particular building?”
He strode out of the room and inched his way across the outer room toward the front door, again narrowly missing the open trap door.
Once outside, he made his way along the side of the building in the direction that Morgan had taken. When he reached the corner, he could see the black bulk of the Space Knight a hundred yards away. He ran toward the base of the ship and met Morgan coming toward him.
“Find anything, Sergeant?” he called.
“Nothing, sir,” replied Morgan. “The ship is ready to blast off and her cargo holds are full. But that’s all.”
“Full of what?”
“I couldn’t see, sir. The main hatch was locked and I coul
d only see through the viewport. But it just looked like general cargo to me.”
“Couldn’t have been crystal?”
“It might have been, sir. It was pretty dark in the hold but it looked like a lot of boxes to me.”
“You don’t put crystal blocks in boxes,” said Strong.
“Sometimes they do, sir. The more expensive grades are crated, so that the surfaces won’t get scratched. Pieces that are going to be used for outer facings on a building, for instance.”
“All right, Sergeant. But I found something back in that building that is going to prove very interesting.”
“The cadets, sir?”
“No. An illegal use of oxygen!”
Quickly Strong explained his discovery, concluding, “Come on. We’re going back in there for a closer inspection!”
“But we can’t, sir,” said Morgan.
“Why not?”
“We only have enough oxygen left in our tanks to get us back to the cleared area.”
“Blast it!” growled Strong. “Aren’t there any masks aboard the ship?”
“No, sir,” replied Morgan.
“Very well, then. The only thing we can do is go back and bring out a searching party in force.” Strong turned and walked rapidly away. “Come on, Sergeant, I think we’re on the way to answering a lot of questions about the failure of the screens.”
Almost running, the two spacemen disappeared into the swirling mist of deadly gases.
No sooner were they out of sight than Tom Corbett and Astro, faces covered with oxygen masks, emerged from the warehouse and headed toward the ship, Miles and Brett close behind them with paralo-ray guns leveled at their backs.
CHAPTER 16
Roger Manning opened his eyes, then closed them. He lay perfectly still and listened. The sound he heard was the unmistakable blasting roar of a spaceship. But there was another sound, much closer. In fact, it was in the room with him.
He opened one eye to see Quent Miles moving about in the one-room, airtight space hut which had been his jail for the last week. Miles was throwing clothes into a space bag, keeping a wary eye on Roger, sprawled on the bunk. Hoisting the bag to his shoulder, Miles closed the face plate of his space helmet, turned to the air lock, and stepped inside, slamming the portal behind him. From the bunk, Roger could hear the hissing of the change of pressure inside the lock from normal to the vacuum of space outside.
The entire week had been a time of waiting and wondering. He couldn’t understand Miles’ actions in taking him prisoner the moment before blast-off from Earth, and then keeping him at the asteroid, seemingly giving up all chances of winning the race.
Roger waited until he was sure that the black-clad spaceman had gone, then he sat up and worked desperately on the thin metal chain binding his wrists. He had been working on one of the links ever since his arrival at Miles’ strange asteroid base, scraping it against the rough metal edge of one of the legs of his bunk. Two days before, he had succeeded in wearing it down to a point where he could snap it easily when the opportunity came for him to make a break. But so far the chance had not presented itself. He had been kept prisoner in the space hut, and Miles had pushed his food in through a vent in the air lock. Now, however, with the sound of the spaceship outside, the cadet decided it was time for action.
Working quickly, Roger snapped the link and tore off the chain, freeing his hands. He allowed himself the longed-for luxury of stretching just once, and then crossed to the small locker beside the air-lock door to take out a space suit. He climbed into it hurriedly, secured the helmet, and began searching the small room for a weapon. In the bottom of a chest he found a rocketman’s wrench. Grasping it tightly, he stepped into the air lock. Just before he turned on the oxygen in his space suit, he listened again for the noise of the blasting ship. Then he grinned as he realized that it wasn’t the noise of the ship he heard, but the vibration it created on the surface of the asteroid. Sound wouldn’t travel through the vacuum of space outside. Suddenly it stopped and Roger realized the tubes were being blasted in preparation for take-off. The young cadet closed the inner portal of the lock, adjusted the pressure, turned on the oxygen of his suit, and waited. In a moment the indicator showed the pressure to be equal to that outside in space, and he opened the outer portal cautiously.
A section of the asteroid belt swam above him. Hundreds of small planetoids and various-sized pieces of space junk drifted in the cold vacuum of space overhead. Roger looked around. The asteroid he was on was so small and the horizon such a short distance away that the base of Miles’ giant black ship was half-covered by the curvature of the planetoid.
Holding the wrench tightly in his hand, the blond-haired cadet circled around the space hut cautiously, looking for Quent Miles, but the spaceman was nowhere in sight. He had walked all the way around the hut and back to the air lock when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Miles, returning to the space hut. Moving quickly, Roger ducked behind a huge boulder and waited for Miles to come closer. It would be impossible to hit Miles with the heavy wrench. The space helmet would ward off the blow. His only chance was to get aboard the ship while Miles was inside the hut. And he would have to move fast. When Miles discovered the hut was empty, he would come looking for the young cadet.
But to the cadet’s great relief, Miles went past the hut and disappeared over the horizon of the asteroid in the opposite direction.
Slipping out from behind the boulder and utilizing the near lack of gravity, Roger ran in giant leaps toward the black spaceship. His last jump brought him to the base of the ship where he quickly clambered up the ladder, opened the portal, and slipped into the air lock. In a matter of seconds he had built up the pressure in the lock to equal the pressure inside the ship. He opened the inner portal and raced up the ladder to the control deck. Throwing himself into the pilot’s chair, he prepared to raise ship. Then he slumped in despair. The master switch had been removed. It was impossible for him to blast off!
He leaped out of the chair and scrambled up the ladder to the radar deck. He flipped on the audioceiver and nervously waited for the tubes to warm up. Nothing happened. Only then he remembered that the communications would not work without power from the generators and they could not be started without the master switch.
“Boy! He sure wasn’t taking any chances of me getting away and leaving him here,” Roger muttered to himself, as he turned back to the ladder and climbed down to the air lock. He stepped inside, and crossing to the small viewport, looked out over the dead landscape of the tiny world for a sign of Quent Miles. He saw the black-clad spaceman returning toward the hut. Roger held his breath. If Miles went into the hut this time and found him missing, he would know that the cadet was aboard the ship. “Manning,” Roger said to himself, “if you ever needed luck, you need it now!”
Miles walked slowly, as if in no hurry, still heading for the space hut. But as Roger held his breath in fear, he passed it again, without so much as pausing to look at it.
Roger grinned. “Spaceman, you are going to say your prayers every night after this,” he murmured.
The cadet turned, and racing as fast as the cumbersome space suit would allow him, headed toward the power deck. Passing the galley, he snatched up several plastic packages of food.
Down on the power deck, Roger went directly to the lead baffling shields around the reactant chambers and carefully squeezed between them and the outer hull. It was going to be a rough ride on the power deck, jammed in behind the firing chambers, but at least he was hidden—and more important, free.
He listened for the clank of metal shoes on the ladder above him. When he heard them, followed closely by the slam of the air-lock portal, he grinned in satisfaction. Opening one of the plastic bags, he began to eat.
In a moment the ship came to life and the power deck became a raging torrent of noise and vibration. As Roger braced himself, he felt the ship quiver and then shake, as under heavy acceleration, it blasted off into s
pace.
* * * *
Captain Strong and young Sergeant Morgan hailed a passing jet truck loaded with Space Marines. “Get me to Commander Walters right away, Lieutenant!” said Strong to the young officer in charge. “This is an emergency.”
“Yes, sir,” acknowledged the young officer, and sent the truck roaring down the empty avenue toward the electronics building where Walters was still checking the reports on the screens.
“Is there anything new, sir?” asked the young officer. “Have the technicians been able to find out what’s making the screens fail?”
“We’re on the right track, Lieutenant,” said Strong shortly. “Can’t you get any more speed out of this thing?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the officer. He rammed the accelerator to the floor and the small truck blasted through the streets as though shot out of cannon.
In a few minutes the truck screamed to a halt in front of the building and Strong leaped toward the door, followed closely by Sergeant Morgan and the Space Marine lieutenant.
Strong found Walters before the telemetering board waiting impatiently for some figures Dr. Joan Dale had sent him to be analyzed and evaluated. He spun around when Strong entered the room at a dead run.
“Steve!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter? Anything happen to the cadets?”
“We didn’t find them, sir, but we did find something else. We—” Before Strong could finish, the calculator began pouring out its answers.
“Excuse me, Steve! These figures could tell us why the screens are failing.”
“But I know why they’re failing, sir!” shouted Strong.
“You know what?” exclaimed Walters.
As all the men in the room stared at him, Strong hurriedly told the commanding officer what he had found, concluding, “I think the room I stumbled into was used as a repair shop. But it was gas-free and pure oxygen was coming out of the pipe I described.”
“I see,” said Walters grimly. “Let me check that against these figures.” He turned to the calculator and with the assistance of Joe Howard, Kit Barnard, and the chief electronics engineer began studying the figures.
The Tom Corbett Space Cadet Megapack: 10 Classic Young Adult Sci-Fi Novels Page 97