Nearly two hours had passed and Tom knew that they would soon be in radar range of the Ganymede garrison. The pressure in the air lock must now be within ten units of zero. Suddenly, overhead, the audioceiver loud-speaker crackled into life.
“Attention! This is Ganymede traffic control. Identify yourself immediately with authorized code!”
Coxine glared at Tom and put his hand on the air-lock valve. “Last time, Corbett. Either you give me the Solar Guard recognition signal, or your buddies are finished!”
Tom gulped. He had no assurance that Coxine would release Roger and Astro, even if he did give him the signal. But he knew there was no choice. He looked up at Coxine.
“Do I have your word as an Earthman that nothing will happen to them?” he asked quietly.
Coxine laughed. “Sure. I’ll give you my word. I’ll even bring them up here so they can see the show and then let you go afterward. But by the time I’m finished with the Ganymede colony the Solar Guard will have your hides for handing out their secrets.”
Tom knew what the pirate said was true. He was taking a gamble now. A gamble that by this time his signal on the Polaris had been picked up and a fleet of ships would be on their trail.
“Attention! Attention! Identify yourselves immediately!” The voice from the Ganymede traffic-control tower came over the audioceiver again. Coxine’s face twisted into a half-smile.
“Well, Corbett, do I get the signal or don’t I?”
“Tell them you’re a Solar Guard armed freighter.” Tom’s voice was low. “You’re assigned to operation ‘Vista.’”
“Vista?” said Coxine excitedly. “Is that the code word? Vista?”
“Yes,” said Tom. “Now open the valve!”
Coxine gave the valve a number of turns in the opposite direction and jumped to the teleceiver. He flipped the key open and called Wallace aboard the Polaris. “When they ask you for identification, tell them you’re working on operation Vista. That’s the key word. Vista!”
“Right!” answered Wallace.
Coxine then turned to the audioceiver and spoke in confident, assured tones. “Attention, Ganymede traffic control! This is armed freighter Samson, assigned on project Vista. Request clearance for approach and touchdown on Ganymede spaceport!”
“You are properly identified, Samson,” replied Ganymede. “Proceed on your present course. End transmission.”
“End transmission!” roared Coxine triumphantly.
The giant pirate turned back to Tom, bellowing, “Thanks, Corbett. You’ve just given me the key to everything I ever wanted.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tom, suddenly frightened by the strange wild gleam in Coxine’s eyes.
“By the time I’ve finished with Ganymede, I’ll have every ship on their spaceport. A fleet big enough to hit any part of the Solar Alliance I want! Solar Guard or no Solar Guard!”
“No! You can’t!” gasped Tom.
“Can’t I?” snarled Coxine. “I’ll show the Solar Guard something they never saw before. Their own ships blasting them right out of space!”
Coxine turned to the intercom, ordered Astro and Roger brought up to the control deck, and then contacted Wallace aboard the Polaris.
“Yeah?” answered the spaceman from the control deck of the rocket cruiser.
“We’re going in according to plan! Train all your guns on the Solar Guard defense installations and stand by!”
“Ready any time you say the word,” replied Wallace.
Jumping back to the intercom, Coxine gave orders to the power deck for full thrust, then ordered the radar bridge to relay the scanner image of Ganymede to the control deck.
As the rocket ship surged ahead under the added thrust, Tom strained against his ropes to watch the scanner and saw the clear image of the colony. He could make out the outline of the uranium plant, the atmosphere booster stations and small buildings clustered around the spaceport. As they drew closer to the tiny colony, Coxine grabbed the intercom and the teleceiver microphones and barked crisp orders to both the Avengers and the Polaris’ power decks. “Full braking rockets!” roared Coxine.
Tom braced himself against the sudden reverse pressure of the powerful nose rockets, and then, in a moment, felt the Avenger come to a dead stop. Watching the scanner again, he saw that they were directly over the Solar Guard garrison. Coxine switched the teleceiver to the colony frequency and spoke sharply and confidently.
“Attention! All citizens of Ganymede colony! This is Bull Coxine. Your entire settlement is under my guns. Any attempt to raise ship and oppose me will be met with instant destruction! Every citizen is hereby ordered to assemble at the municipal spaceport within five minutes. All Solar Guard officers and men will do the same. You have five minutes to comply, or I will open fire!”
The giant spaceman flipped off the teleceiver before anyone on Ganymede could answer. Pressing with all his might, Tom managed to see more of the scanner which suddenly showed the people of Ganymede scurrying out to the spaceport in panic. Coxine watched the activity on the scanner for a second and then grunted his satisfaction.
Suddenly the hatch was thrown open and Astro and Roger were pushed into the room by two crewmen.
Coxine turned to them, smiling thinly. “You owe your lives to your buddy here. One more minute and you would’ve been walking with the angels. Now,” he added to the crewmen, “tie them up so they can see the scanner. I want them to see how easy it is to knock off a Solar Guard garrison!”
“Why you—” Astro lunged toward the pirate but was stopped in his tracks by a blast from a paralo-ray gun behind him. The big cadet stood rigid, motionless, every nerve and muscle in his body paralyzed. Coxine sneered and turned back to the intercom while his men tied up the two cadets.
Tom and Roger looked at each other and, without speaking, knew what the other was thinking. Their only hope was the beacon signal aboard the Polaris.
After the men had tied Astro, they released him from the effects of the ray charge and threw him down beside Roger.
“How do you feel?” asked Tom.
“Like I’ve been run through a set of gears,” mumbled Astro. “How about yourself?”
“O.K.,” replied Tom. “Was it”—he paused—“was it tough in the air lock?”
Roger smiled. “Not as tough as it must have been on you up here. We realized what was going on as soon as we found out we were losing air.”
The blond-haired cadet shook his head and Tom noticed that both Roger and Astro were weak from their ordeal in the chamber.
At the control panel, Coxine was bawling orders to his crew. “Jet boats one, two, three, four, and five! Stand by to blast off!”
The three cadets looked at each other helplessly.
“Russell, check in,” continued the burly spaceman.
“Russell here!” replied a voice on the intercom.
“You’re in charge of the party. I want you to do one thing, and one thing only! Take the largest ships on the spaceport and blast off. Don’t touch anything else! Just the ships. Those you can’t get off the ground, leave. We’ll blast them later!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Coxine strode over to the teleceiver. Immediately the image of a man in the uniform of a Solar Guard major appeared on the screen. His voice echoed in the control room.
“Hello, Coxine! This is Major Sommers! Come in, Coxine!”
“Yeah—” replied Coxine. “Whaddya want?” The pirate captain stepped arrogantly in front of the teleceiver’s transmitting lens, and from the look on the officer’s face, Tom knew he had seen Coxine on his own screen.
“We’ve followed orders,” said the major. “Our only request is that you do not harm any of the citizens—”
Coxine cut him off. “Stow that space gas! I’ll do what I please! I’m sending down a crew of men. They have certain orders. Any interference from you and I’ll open fire with everything I’ve got—right in the middle of the spaceport.”
Tom gasped
. The spaceport was now crowded with the citizens of the tiny colony.
The major nodded gravely. “I understand,” he said. “You may rest assured no one will interfere with your men!”
“Huh!” sneered Coxine. “You don’t sound so high and mighty now that you’re staring into the barrels of a dozen atomic blasters!” He snapped off the teleceiver and roared with laughter.
Tom felt a shiver run down his spine. He could imagine the frustration of the Ganymede garrison, a crack crew of fighting men, forced to surrender without firing a shot. And he had been the cause by giving Coxine the code recognition signal!
Coxine snapped an order into the intercom and a moment later Tom saw the jet boats on the scanner, rocketing down to the surface of the small satellite.
As, one by one, the small ships landed on the spaceport, the three cadets could see the crowds of colonists fan out, allowing the jet boats to come in without interference.
Coxine strode up and down the control deck restlessly, but keeping his eyes on the activity below. Suddenly he rushed to the scanner, stared hard, and then let out a roar of triumph.
The three cadets saw the reason immediately. On the scanner were the unmistakable outlines of two Solar Guard heavy cruisers, four destroyers, and six scouts, hurtling spaceward at tremendous speed. Coxine spun around, balled his fists into tight knots, and shook them at the three cadets.
“I’ve won! I’ve won!” He roared with insane laughter and there was a crazed gleam in his eyes. “I’ve got the ships, the guns, the men, and the secret of the adjustable light-key. By the time I’m finished with the Solar Guard there won’t be anything left of those crawlers but what you can hear on a story spool, and the Solar Alliance will be run by one man!” He paused, his face grew hard and he tapped his chest menacingly. “Me!”
CHAPTER 20
“I don’t care if the blasted ship blows up!” roared Captain Strong to the power-deck officer of the Solar Guard rocket cruiser Arcturus. “I want every ounce of thrust you can get out of this space heap!”
The young Solar Guard captain turned back to the loud-speaker of the audioceiver, turned the volume dial a fraction, and listened. The steady pronounced ping of Roger’s signal beacon filled his ears.
When Strong discovered that Coxine had outwitted him, he had gone aboard the rocket cruiser Arcturus of Squadron Ten and had continued on search patrol. He dared not break audio silence to warn the cadets aboard the Polaris, lest he give away the position of the ship. Later, when the radar officer of the Arcturus reported a steady signal over the audioceiver, Strong at first dismissed it as some form of interference from space. But when Titan failed to report the arrival of the Polaris on time, Strong investigated the strange sound. Taking a bearing on the signal, he discovered it came from a position dangerously close to the small Jovian colony of Ganymede. After repeated attempts to raise the Polaris failed, and no distress signals had been received, Strong feared that Bull Coxine had won again. In a desperate effort to catch the criminal, he took repeated bearings on the signal and ordered full emergency space speed toward the small satellite of Jupiter.
Contacting Commander Walters at Space Academy, Strong related his suspicions and received permission to carry out a plan of action.
“I want you to engage the enemy at all costs!” ordered Walters. “Blast his space-crawling hide into protons! That’s an order!”
“Yes, sir!” replied Strong with grim determination. “There’s nothing I’d like better.”
Six hours later Strong received confirmation of his worst fears. He was handed a message that read:
EMERGENCY:
GANYMEDE GARRISON ATTACKED ZERO THREE HUNDRED HOURS BY TWO SHIPS. ONE VESSEL IDENTIFIED AS ROCKET CRUISER POLARIS. SEND AID IMMEDIATELY. ENTIRE COLONY AT MERCY OF COXINE. SIGNED, SOMMERS, MAJOR, SOLAR GUARD.
Strong realized at once that the cadets had been forced to give the recognition code to the pirate. There wasn’t any other way for the pirate to penetrate the defenses of Ganymede. And, thought Strong bitterly, to blast Coxine was to blast the cadets as well. The commander’s words echoed again in his ears, “…blast him, Steve! That’s an order!”
Strong turned to his second-in-command. “Man all guns! Stand by to attack under plan S! We’ll engage the enemy as soon as he’s sighted!”
The young officer saluted and turned away quickly. But not before he saw the mist in Steve Strong’s eyes.
* * * *
Tom, Roger, and Astro watched the incredible scene taking place in front of them with unbelieving eyes. Seven men were standing at rigid attention on the control deck of the Avenger. Wallace, Russell, Attardi, Harris, Shelly, Martin, and Brooks. In front of them, standing equally rigid, Bull Coxine was addressing them in a low restrained voice.
“Raise your right hands and repeat after me.”
The men raised their hands.
“I hereby pledge my life to Bull Coxine!”
“…I hereby pledge my life to Bull Coxine.…” repeated the men in unison.
“To uphold his decisions, obey his orders, and fulfill his purpose of destroying the Solar Alliance and establishing a new governmental order!”
The seven men repeated the words slowly and hesitantly.
“All right,” said Coxine. “From this day on, you are my chief lieutenants. You will command the ships of my fleet, and when we destroy the power of the Solar Guard and take over the Alliance, you will help me rule our new order.”
The seven men looked at each other, raised a mild cheer, and waited as Coxine shook hands with each of them.
“All right,” said Coxine abruptly as he reached the end of the line. “Get to your ships and prepare for full acceleration. We go into action immediately!”
The men filed from the room silently, each with a worried look on his face. Coxine failed to notice their lack of enthusiasm and turned to the three cadets.
“Some day, boys,” he said, “you’ll go down in history as being the first witnesses to the establishment of the new order.”
Astro glared up at the giant spaceman. “We’ll be the witnesses to the biggest bust in the universe when the Solar Guard catches up with you!”
“Yeah,” drawled Roger in his most casual manner. “You’re the one that’ll go down in history, Coxine, as the biggest space-gassing idiot that ever blasted off!”
Tom suddenly guffawed. Though close to death, he couldn’t help laughing at Roger’s remark. The big spaceman flushed angrily and with the flat of his hand slapped the cadet across the face. Then, he turned to the teleceiver and opened the circuit to all the ships that were standing by in space around the Avenger, the ships of the Ganymede garrison.
“Stand by for acceleration,” he called. “We’re going to show the Solar Alliance who’s boss, beginning right now! I’ll give you the target in a few minutes but head in the direction of Earth!”
He faced the three cadets and sneered. “By the time I’m finished with Luna City, the only thing active will be radioactive!”
Suddenly Gus Wallace could be heard screaming over the teleceiver, his face a mask of fear and panic.
“Bull! Bull!” he shouted. “The Solar Guard! We just spotted them! Squadrons! Heading straight for us! We’ve got to get out of here!”
“What?” roared Coxine, turning to his radar scanner. The blips on the screen verified the alarm. He shouted into the teleceiver, “Man your guns! We’ll wipe them out right now!”
“But, Bull—” whined Wallace. “They’ll blast us out of space!”
Coxine roared into the mike. “The first one of you yellow crawlers that tries to run for it will be blasted by me! Man your guns, I said! This is our big chance! Wipe out the Solar Guard now and the Solar Alliance is ours for the asking! Fight, men! Fight!”
Tom, Roger, and Astro looked at each other, mouths open, not knowing whether they should laugh or not at the dramatic speech of the huge spaceman. But whatever the private feelings of the criminals, Coxine had roused them to
fever pitch and the boys could hear them racing through the Avenger, preparing to fight the squadrons of Solar Guard ships bearing down on them.
Coxine strapped himself in the pilot’s chair and began barking orders to his battle stations, whipping his men into action relentlessly.
And then suddenly Captain Strong’s voice, vibrant and firm, came over the audioceiver, demanding the surrender of the pirate captain and his fleet.
“Never!” roared Coxine. “You’ll get my surrender from the barrels of every blaster I have under my command!”
“Then,” replied Strong, “I have no alternative but to attack!”
With a coldness that reached across the void of space and gripped their hearts with icy fingers, the three cadets heard their skipper give his squadrons the deadly order!
“Fire!”
Coxine snapped his order at almost the same instant and the three cadets felt the Avenger shudder as her turrets began blazing away, returning round for round of the deadly atomic missiles.
Racing from scanner to the control panel and back again, Coxine watched the battle rage around him. With speeds nearing that of light, exhaust trails cut scarlet paths through the black space, as the two opposing fleets attacked, counterattacked, and then regrouped to attack again. The rhythm of the blasters on the Avenger had taken on a familiar pattern of five-second intervals between bursts. Gradually, one by one, the pirate ships were hit, demolished or badly damaged, but still they fought on. Coxine, his eyes wild with desperation, now kept lining up ships in his radar sights and firing, with no way of knowing which was friend and which was foe.
Tom, Roger, and Astro watched the dogfight on the scanner in horrified fascination. Never before had they seen such maneuvering, as the giant ships avoided collision sometimes by inches. Once, Tom tore his eyes away from the scanner when he saw a rocket destroyer plow through the escaping swarm of jet boats after one of the pirate ships had been hit.
Fire and change course, fire and change course, again and again, Coxine performed the miracle of escaping the deadly atomic blasters aboard the Solar Guard ships.
The Tom Corbett Space Cadet Megapack: 10 Classic Young Adult Sci-Fi Novels Page 51
