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Watch he'll either leave, or come after us " The T-247 had settled inside the lock now, and the great metal door closed after it. The whole patrol ship had been swallowed by a giant. Kendall was sketching swiftly on a notebook, watching the vast ship closely, putting down a record of its lines, and formation. He glanced up at it, and then down for a few more lines, and up at it
Then it darted toward them at incredible speed till the poor little T-247 seemed to be standing still, as sailors say. The stranger was so gigantic now, the screens could not show all of him. "God, Buck he's going to take us!" Simultaneously, the T-247 rolled, and from her broke every possible stream of destruction.
It's almost as big as Antares, and it won't hold still. Now that would make a bad planetary system." "It would!" Kendall laughed. But as we know he laughed too soon, and he shouldn't have used the conditional. He should have said, "It does!" Gresth Gkae, Commander of Expeditionary Force 93, of the Planet Sthor, was returning homeward with joyful mind. In the lock of his great ship, lay the T-247.
The M-122 got out there two days later, in response to the calls the T-247 had sent out. As soon as she got within ten million miles of the little tender, she began getting Cole's signals, and within twelve hours had reached the tiny thing, located it, and picked it up.
The T-247 spun on her axis, and abruptly the acceleration built up as the ion-rockets began to shudder. A faint smell of "heat" began to creep out of the converter. Immense "weight" built up, and pressed the men into their specially designed seats The gigantic ship across the way turned slowly, and seemed to stare at the T-247.
Captain Jim Warren was in command, one of the old school commanders of the IP. He listened to Kendall's report, listened to Cole's tale and radioed back a report of his own. Space pirates in a large ship had attacked the T-247, he said, and carried it away. He advised a close watch.
In a six-man cruiser, his real work in the Interplanetary Patrol had started. He was still in it but it was his command now, and a blue circle on his left sleeve gave his lieutenant's rank. Buck Kendall had immediately proceeded to enlist in his command the IP man who had made the mistaken bet, and Rad Cole was on duty with him now. Cole was the technician of the T-247.
He started it through once, then again, then again, at different tone settings, till he found a very shrill whine that seemed to clear up most of Nichols' bad key-work. "T-247 T-247 Emergency. Emergency. Randing reports the over his horizon. Huge ip reign manufacture. Almost spherical. Randing's stopped. They got him I think. He said the ship was as big as a transport. Said it was headed my way.
"This thing is so tiny, that it may escape their observation in the fields of the T-247 and Pluto down there. It's our only hope." "What happened? How in the name of the planets did they kill those men without a sound, without a flash, and without even warning us, or injuring us?" "Neutrons don't you see?" "Frankly, I don't. I'm no scientist merely a technician.
And one average six-man cruiser, one hundred and eleven feet long, twenty-two in diameter. It was the T-208, a sister ship of the T-247, the first ship to be destroyed. The T-208 started out from Luna, and with full acceleration, sped out toward Phobos. Slowly she circled the satellite, while distant scouts kept her under view.
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