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And so it happened that the spacemen of the SCN Scorpius turned their valves, threw their controls and disengaged their boron control rods, and the great cruiser flashed into space, while the deputy commander and the safety officer were completely tangled with a very flustered and unhappy new Planeteer lieutenant. Sergeant-major Koa and his men had made it before the valve closed.
He turned so fast that he lost his balance and floated above the surface like a captive balloon. Santos, who had been standing nearby to help if requested, hooked a toe on the ground spike, caught him, and set him upright on the ground again. "Get me the radiation detection instruments," he ordered. Koa sensed the urgency in his voice and got the instruments himself.
He sat down, too, because deceleration was starting. As his men looked at each other in surprise at the quickness of it, he continued, "The old bucket found something we need an asteroid of pure thorium." The enlisted Planeteers knew as well as he what that meant. There were whistles of astonishment. Koa slapped his thigh. "By Gemini! What do we do about it, sir?" "We capture it," Rip said.
It meant losing just enough velocity to be drawn closer to the sun, and then picking up a much higher velocity to get free again! Rip got his instruments and pulled out a special slide rule designed for use in space. He had Koa stand by with stylus and computation board and take down his figures.
Rip and Koa stepped out and walked a little distance away. Santos and Pederson cast the landing boat adrift and shoved it away from the anchored boat. In a moment fire spurted from the bottom tube, spreading over the dull metal and licking at the feet of the Planeteers. Rip watched the boat rise upward to the great, sleek, dark bulk of the Scorpius.
It had been shipped without a combat casing. "Koa, make a final check. You can untie the landing boat, except for one line. We'll be taking off in a few minutes." "Right, sir." Koa glided toward the landing boat, which was moored out of sight beyond the horizon. It was nearly time. Rip had a moment's misgiving. Had his figures or his sightings been off? His scalp prickled at the thought.
Rip centered the top of the instrument’s vertical hair line on Alpha Centauri, then waited until Koa was almost out of sight over the asteroid’s horizon, which was only a few hundred yards away. He turned up the volume on his helmet communicator. "Koa, move about ten feet to your left." Koa did so. Rip sighted past the vertical hairline at the belt light. "That’s a little too far.
"At the moment, our speed around the sun is just slightly more than ten miles a second. If we just shifted orbits and kept the same speed, it would take us months to reach Terra. But we'll use one bomb for retrothrust, then fire two to increase speed. The estimate is that we'll push up to about forty miles a second." Koa spoke up.
Tigers are common, and bears are numerous; they have, besides, the leopard, panther, viverine cat, and civet; and of the dog tribe the pariah, jackal, fox, and wild dog, called Koa. Deer are very numerous, of six or seven kinds. A small alligator inhabits the hill streams, said to be a very different animal from either of the Soane species.
Rip plugged it into his belt. Now his voice would be heard on the Scorpius. "Calling Scorpius! Calling Scorpius! Foster reporting. We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack. Over to you." The answer rang in his helmet. "Scorpius to Foster. Hold ’em, Planeteers. We’re on our way!" "Here comes the Connie," Koa yelled. Rip braced.
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