by Anthology
"I'm Hawkins, senior space officer," the spaceman said. "Welcome, Foster. We've been losing weight wondering if we'd get here in time."
"I was never so glad to see spacemen in my life," Rip said truthfully. "What kind of craft is this, sir?"
"Experimental," the space officer answered. "It has a number, but we call it the ball-bat because it's shaped like a ball and goes like a bat. We were about to take off for some test runs around the space platform when we got a hurry call to come here. The Aquila has two of these. If they prove out, they'll replace the snapper-boats. More power, greater maneuverability, heavier weapons, and they carry more men."
Rip looked out through the port and saw the two Federation cruisers closing in on the Connie. Apparently the Connie commander had agreed to let the cruisers come alongside.
The ball-bat blasted to the Aquila, paused at an open port, then slid inside. The valve was shut before Rip could unbuckle his harness. Air flooded into the chamber, and the lights flicked on. The space officer gave Rip a hand out of the harness, and the young Planeteer went through the hatch to the deck.
The inner valve opened, and a lean, sandy-haired officer in space blue, with the insignia of a commander, stepped through. Grinning, he hurried to Rip's side and twisted his bubble, lifting it off.
"Hurry, lad," he greeted Rip. "I'm MacFife. Get out of that suit quick, because ye don't want to miss what's aboot to happen." With his own hands he unlocked the complicated belt with its gadgets and equipment.
Rip slipped the upper part over his head and stepped out of the bottom. "Thanks, Commander. I'm one grateful Planeteer, believe me!"
"Come on. We'll hurry right across ship to the opposite valve. Lad, I've a son in the Planeteers, and he's just about your own age. He's on Ganymede. He and the others will be proud of what ye've done."
MacFife was pulling himself along rapidly by the convenient handholds. Rip followed, his breathing a little rapid in the heavier air of the ship. He followed the Scottish commander through the maze of passages that crossed the ship. They stopped at a valve where spacemen were waiting. With them was an officer who carried a big case.
"The instruments," MacFife said, pointing. "We've tinkered with them a bit, just to make it look real."
"But why do you want to board the Connie?"
MacFife's eye closed in a wink. "Ye'll see."
There was a slight bump as the cruiser touched the Connie. The waiting group recovered balance and faced the valve. Rip knew that spacemen in the inner lock were making fast to the Connie, setting up the airtight seal.
It wasn't long before a bell sounded, and a spaceman opened the inner valve. Two men in space suits were waiting, and beyond them the outer valve was joined by a tube to the outer valve of the Connie ship. Rip stared at the Connie spacemen in their red tunics and gray trousers. One, an officer with two pistols in his belt, stepped forward.
Rip noted that the other Connies were heavy with weapons, too. None of his group had any.
"I'm the commander," the scowling Connie said. "Bring your instruments in. We'll check them; then you get out."
"Ye're no verra friendly," MacFife said, his burr even more pronounced. He led Rip and the officer with the instruments into the Connie ship.
A handsome Federation spaceman with a moustache, the first Rip had ever seen, stepped into the room from a passageway on the opposite side. The spaceman bowed with exquisite grace. "I have the honor of making myself known," he proclaimed. "Commander Rémy Galliene of the Sagittarius."
The Connie commander grunted. He was afraid, Rip realized. The Connie suspected a trick, and he had no idea what it might be.
Galliene saw Rip's black uniform and hurried to shake his hand. "So this is the young lieutenant who is responsible! Lieutenant, today the spacemen honor the Planeteers because of you. Most days we fight each other, but today we fight together, eh? I am glad to meet you!"
"And I'm glad to meet you, sir," Rip returned. He liked the twinkle in the Frenchman's eye. He would have given a lot to know what scheme Galliene and MacFife had cooked up.
The Connie had overheard Galliene's greeting. He glared at Rip. The Frenchman saw the look and smiled happily. "Ah, you do not know each other? Commander, I have the honor to make known Lieutenant Foster of the Federation Special Order Squadrons. He is in command on the asteroid."
The Connie blurted, "So! I send boats to help you, and you fire on them!"
So that was to be the Consops story! Rip thought quickly, then held up his hand in a shocked gesture that would have done credit to the Frenchman. "Oh, no, Commander! You misunderstand. We had no way of communicating by radio, so I did the only thing we could do. I fired rockets as a warning. We didn't want your boats to get caught in a nuclear explosion."
He shrugged. "It was very unlucky for us that the sun threw my gunner's aim off and he hit your boats--quite by accident."
MacFife coughed to cover up a chuckle. Galliene hid a smile by stroking his moustache.
The Connie commander growled, "And I suppose it was accident that you took my men prisoner?"
"Prisoner?" Rip looked bewildered. "We took no prisoners. When your boats arrived, the men asked if they might not join us. They claimed refuge, which we had to give them under interplanetary law."
"I will take them back," the Connie stated.
"You will not," Galliene replied with equal positiveness. "The law is very clear, my friend. Your men may return willingly, but you cannot force them. When we reach Terra we will give them a choice. Those who wish to return to the Consolidation will be given transportation to the nearest border."
The Connie commander motioned to a heavily armed officer. "Take their instruments. Check them quickly." He put his lips together in a straight line and stared at the Federation men. They stared back with equal coldness.
The minutes ticked by. Rip wondered again what kind of plan MacFife and Galliene had.
Additional minutes passed, and the officer returned with the cases. Wordlessly he handed them to Galliene and MacFife. The Connie commander snapped, "There. Now get out of my ship."
Galliene bowed. "You have been a most courteous and gracious host," he said. "Your conversation has been stimulating, inspiring, and informative. Our profound thanks."
He shook hands with Rip and MacFife, bowed to the Connie commander again, and went out the way he had come. There wasn't anything to say after the Frenchman's sarcastic farewell speech. MacFife, Rip, and the officer with the instruments went back through the valves into their own ship.
Once inside, MacFife called, "Come with me. Hurry." He led the way through passages and up ladders, to the very top of the ship, to the hatch where the astrogators took their star sights. The protective shield of nuclite had been rolled back, and they could see into space through the clear-vision port.
Rip and MacFife hurried to the side where they were connected to the Connie. Rip looked down along the length of the ship. The valve connection was in the middle of each ship, at the point of greatest diameter. From that point each ship grew more slender.
MacFife pointed to the Connie's nose. Projecting from it like great horns were the ship's steering tubes. Unlike the Federation cruiser, which blasted steam through internal tubes that did not project, the Connie used chemical fuel.
"Watch," MacFife said.
There were similar tubes on the Connie's stern, Rip knew. He wondered what they had to do with the plan.
MacFife walked to a wall communicator. "Follow instructions."
He turned to Rip. "Remember, lad, the Sagittarius is on the other side of the Connie, about to do the same thing."
Rip waited in silence, wondering.
Then the voice horn called. "Valve closed!"
A second voice yelled, "Blast!"
A tremor jarred its way through the entire ship, making the deck throb under Rip's feet. He saw that the ship's nose had swung away from the Connie. What in space--
"Blast!"
The nose sw
ung into the Connie again, with a jar that sent Rip sliding into the clear plastic of the astrodome. His nose jammed into the plastic, but he didn't even wince, because he saw the Connie cruiser's steering tubes buckle under the Aquila's sudden shove.
And suddenly the picture was clear. The two Federation cruisers hadn't cared about getting into the Connie ship. They had only wanted an excuse to tie up to it so they could do what had just been done.
They had sheared off the enemy's steering tubes, first at the stern, then at the bow, leaving him helpless, able to go only forward or back in the direction in which he happened to be pointing!
MacFife had a broad grin on his face. As Rip started to speak, he held up his hand and pointed at a wall speaker.
The Connie commander came on the circuit. He screamed, "You planned that! You--you--"
Galliene's voice spoke soothingly. "But my dear commander! How can I apologize? Believe me, the man responsible will be reward--I mean, the man responsible will be disciplined. You may rest assured of it. How unfortunate! I am overcome with shame."
MacFife picked up a microphone. "Same here, Connie. A terrible accident. Aye, the man who did it will hear from me."
"It was no accident," the Connie screamed.
"Ah," Galliene replied, "but you cannot prove otherwise. Commander, do you realize what this means? You are helpless. Interplanetary law says that a helpless space ship must be salvaged and taken in tow by the nearest cruiser, no matter what its nationality. We will do this jointly, the Aquila and the Sagittarius. We will take turns towing you, my friend. We will haul you to Terra--like any other piece of space junk."
MacFife could remain quiet no longer. "Yes, mister. And that's no' the end o' it. We will collect the salvage fee. One half the value of the salvaged vessel. Aye! My men will like that, since we share and share alike on salvage. Now, put out a cable from your nose tube. I'll take ye in tow first."
He cut the communicator off and met Rip's grin.
The two spacemen had figured out the one way to repay the Connie for his attempts on the asteroid. They couldn't fire on him, but they could fake an accident that would cripple him and cost Consops millions of dollars in salvage fees.
Nor would Consops refuse to pay. Salvage law was clear. Whoever performed the salvage was not required to turn the ship back to its owners until the fee had been paid.
And there was another angle. The cruisers would tow the Connie into the Federation spaceport in New Mexico. If past experience was any indication, the Connie would lose about half its crew, perhaps more. They would claim sanctuary in the Federation.
Rip shook hands solemnly with the grinning Scotchman. It would be a long time before Consops tried piracy again.
"We'll be back at our family fight again tomorrow," MacFife said, "but today we celebrate together. Ah, lad, this is pure joy to me. I've had a score to settle with yon Connies for years. Now I've done it."
He put an arm around Rip's shoulders. "While I'm in a givin' mood, which is not the way of us Scots, is there anything ye'd like?"
Rip could think of only one thing. "A hot shower. For me and my men. And will you take the prisoners off our hands?"
"Yes to both. Anything else?"
"We'll need some rocket fuel. Terra says we have to correct course. Also, we'll need a nuclear charge to throw us into a braking ellipse. And we need a new landing boat. The sun baked the equipment out of ours."
MacFife nodded. "So be it. I'll send men to the asteroid to bring back the prisoners and your Planeteers." He smiled. "We'll let yon rock go by itself while hot showers and a good meal are had by all. Ye've earned it, lad."
Rip started to thank the Scot, but his stomach suddenly turned over, and black dizziness flooded in on him. He heard MacFife's sudden exclamation, felt hands on him.
White light blinded him. He shook his head and tried to keep his stomach from acting up. A voice asked, "Were you shielded from those nuclear blasts?"
"No," he said past a constricted throat. "Not from the last. We got some prompt radiation."
"When was that? The exact time?"
Rip tried to remember. He felt horrible. "It was twenty-three-oh-five."
"Bad," the voice said. "He must have taken enough roentgens of gamma and neutrons to reach or exceed the median-lethal dose."
Rip found his voice again. "Santos," he said urgently. "On the asteroid. He got it, too. The rest were shielded."
MacFife snapped orders. The ball-bat would have Santos in the ship within minutes. Being sick in a space suit was about the most unpleasant thing that could happen.
A hypospray tingled against Rip's arm. The drug penetrated, caught a quick lift to all parts of his body through the bloodstream. Consciousness slid away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Spacefall
Rip was never more eloquent. He argued, he begged, and he wheedled.
The Aquila's chief physician listened with polite interest, but he shook his head. "Lieutenant, you simply are not aware of the close call you've had. Another two hours without treatment, and we might not have been able to save you."
"I appreciate that," Rip assured him. "But I'm fine now, sir."
"You are not fine. You are anything but fine. We've loaded you with antibiotics and blood cell regenerator, and we've given you a total transfusion. You feel fine, but you're not."
The doctor looked at Rip's red hair. "That's a fine thatch of hair you have. In a week or two it will be gone, and you'll have no more hair than an egg. A well person doesn't lose hair. Your head will shine like a space helmet."
The ship's radiation safety officer had put both Rip's and Santos' dosimeters into his measuring equipment. They had taken over a hundred roentgens of hard radiation above the tolerance limit. This was the result of being caught unshielded when the last nuclear charge went off.
"Sir," Rip pleaded, "you can load us with suppressives. It's only a few days more before we reach Terra. You can keep us going until then. We'll both turn in for full treatment as soon as we get to the space platform. But we have to finish the job; can't you see that, sir?"
The doctor shook his head. "You're a fool, even for a Planeteer. Before you get over this, you'll be sicker than you've ever been. You have a month in bed waiting for you. If I let you go back to the asteroid, I'll only be delaying the time when you start full treatment."
"But the delay won't hurt if you inject us with suppressives, will it?" Rip asked quickly. "Don't they keep the sickness checked?"
"Yes, for a maximum of about ten days. Then they no longer have sufficient effect, and you come down with it."
"But it won't take ten days," Rip pointed out. "It will only take a couple, and it won't hurt us."
MacFife had arrived to hear the last exchange. He nodded sympathetically. "Doctor, I can appreciate how the lad feels. He started something, and he wants to finish it. If y'can let him, safely, I think ye should."
The doctor shrugged. "I can let him. There's a nine to one chance it will do him no harm. But the one chance is what I don't like."
"I'll know it if the suppressives start to wear off, won't I?" Rip asked.
"You certainly will. You'll get weaker rapidly."
"How rapidly?"
"Perhaps six hours. Perhaps more."
Rip nodded. "That's what I thought. Doctor, we're less than six hours from Terra by ship. If the stuff wears off, we can be in the hospital within a couple of hours. Once we go into a braking ellipse, we can reach a hospital in less than an hour by snapper-boat."
"Let him go," MacFife said.
The doctor wasn't happy about it, but he had run out of arguments. "All right, Commander--if you'll assume responsibility for getting him off the asteroid and into a Terra or space platform hospital in time."
"I'll do that," MacFife assured him. "Now get your hyposprays and fill him full of that stuff you use. The corporal, too."
"Sergeant," Rip corrected. His first action on getting back to the asteroid would be to recom
mend Santos' promotion to Terra base. He intended to recommend Kemp for corporal, too. He was sure the Planeteers at Terra would make the promotions.
The two Federation cruisers were still holding course along with the asteroid, the Connie cruiser between them.
Within an hour, Rip and Santos, both in false good health, thanks to medical magic, were on their way back to the asteroid in a ball-bat boat.
The remaining time passed quickly. The sun receded. The Planeteers corrected course. Rip sent in his recommendations for promotions and looked over the last nuclear crater to see why the blast had started the asteroid spinning.
