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Updated: June 28, 2025
Bring them here to man the pumps." He dashed away. Snap called after him, "Kill them if they argue!" Miko's voice sounded from the turret call grid: "Falling! Haljan, you can see it now! Check us!" Desperate moments. Or was it an hour? Coniston brought the men. He stood over them with menacing weapon. We had all the pumps going. The pressure rose a little in the tanks. Enough to shift a bow plate.
"And I'm glad Miko is dead," Anita added. I explained, "That accursed Miko murdered her brother." Acting! And never once did we dare relax. If only Miko's signals would hold off and give us time! We may have talked for half an hour. We were in a small steel-lined cubby, located in the forward deck of the ship. The dome was over it.
The Planetara's respiratory controls started; the pressure equalizers began operating; and the gravity plates began shifting into lifting combinations. The ship was hissing and quivering with it, combined with the grating of the last of the dome ports. And Miko's command: "Lift, Haljan!" Hahn had been mingling with the confusion of the deck though I had hardly noticed him.
The deck outside, what I could see of it, was vacant. Balch lay dead close outside the chart room door. The bodies of Blackstone and the course master had been removed from the turret window. As a forward lookout, one of Miko's men was on duty in the nearby tower. Hahn was at the turret's controls. The ship was under orderly handling, heading back upon a new course. For the Earth? The Moon?
But Coniston could impersonate Wilks, whereas Miko's giant stature at once would reveal his identity. Miko had been engaged in smashing the ports. He had looked up and seen me kill Coniston. He had come to assail me. And then he had read Grantline's message to me. It was his first knowledge that his ship was at hand. With the camp exits inoperative, Grantline and his men were imprisoned.
But I was trapped in the narrow passage. I might have fought my way out. Or Miko might have shot me. But there was the danger that, in her horror, Anita would betray herself. I backed against the wall. "Don't kill me! See, I will not fight!" I flung up my arms. And the crew, emboldened and courageous under Miko's gaze, leaped on me and bore me down. The futile plans of humans!
There were, Anita said, no navigators among Miko's crew. They would not dare oppose us. "But it should be done at once, Anita. In a few hours we will be at the asteroid." "Yes. I will go now and try to get the weapons." "Where is Snap?" "Still in the radio room. One of the crew guards him." Coniston was roaming the ship. He was still loitering on the deck, watching my door. Hahn was in the turret.
And then an interior audiphone blared a calling for Grantline. Someone in the instrument room of the adjoining building was talking. "Commander, I tried the telescope to see who got killed " But he did not say who got killed, for he had greater news. "Commander! The brigand ship!" Miko's reinforcements had come. Not Wilks, but Coniston! His drawling, British voice: "You, Gregg Haljan! How nice!"
The morning watch of the crew were at their posts in the hull corridors. The stewards were preparing a morning meal. There were nine members of subordinates altogether, Anita had calculated. Six of them were in Miko's pay. The other three our own men who had not been killed in the fighting had joined the brigands. "And Dr. Frank, Anita?" He was in the lounge.
Then I realized that doubtless the conspirators were already there. I set my tiny eavesdropper on the library floor beside me; connected its little battery; focused its projector. Was Miko's room insulated? I could not tell. There was a small ventilating grid above the door. Across its opening, if the room was insulated, a blue sheen of radiance would be showing. And there would be a faint hum.
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