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Updated: May 28, 2025
But these cases were bigger and heavier. It took four Martians to carry one, which meant they weighed close to half a ton each. The Martians could carry more than double an earthman’s capacity. When the lock worked next time, a Planeteer captain came in. He breathed the heavy air appreciatively, fingering the oxygen mask he had to wear outside.
Some of the spacemen have been high-vacking for twenty years or more, and they're tough. They're as nasty as a Callistan teekal. They like to eat Planeteer junior officers for breakfast." Lt. Felipe "Flip" Villa asked, "With salt, Joe?" Major Barris sighed. "No use trying to tell you space chicks anything.
He had a mathematically square jaw, a lopsided nose, green eyes, and sandy hair. He spoke with a pronounced Irish brogue. Rip started to announce his name, rank, and the fact that he was reporting as ordered. Commander O'Brine brushed his words aside and stated flatly, "You're a Planeteer. I don't like Planeteers." Rip didn't know what to say, so he kept still.
A second or two later the tube burned out. Santos was several yards away and slightly above him. Rip saw that the Planeteer was all right and turned his attention back to the cruiser. It was close enough to the assault boat to haul it in with grappling hooks. The hooks emerged and engaged the torn metal of the boat, then drew it into the waiting port. The massive air door slid closed.
Corporal Pederson produced hardened steel spikes with ring tops. Private Trudeau had a sledge. Driving the first spike would be the hardest, because the action of swinging the hammer would propel the Planeteer like a rocket exhaust. In space, the law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction had to be remembered every moment.
He knew that most, if not all, of the Planeteer astrophysicists were in either high or low space on special work. Chances were there was no astrophysicist nearer than Ganymede. So the choice had fallen to him. He had a mental image of the Terra base scientists feeding data into the electronic brain, taking the results, and writing fast orders for the men and supplies needed.
This was a ceremony in which questions and answers never changed. It was supposed to make Planeteer cadets and junior officers feel properly humble, but it didn't work. By tradition, the Planeteers were the cockiest gang that ever blasted through high vacuum. Major Barris shook his head sadly. "You admit you're a simp, Foster. The rest of you are simps, too, but you don't believe it.
I might have made a decent officer out of you." Rip grinned. "That’s a real compliment, sir. I might return it by saying I’d be glad to have you as a Planeteer corporal any time." O’Brine chuckled. "All right. Let’s declare a truce, Planeteer. We’ll meet again. Space isn’t very big." A short time later Rip stood in front of his asteroid base and watched the great cruiser drive into space.
So he took his disappointment out on the nearest Planeteer, who happened to be Rip. "The gases go through tubes," O’Brine went on. "A little nuclear material also leaks into the tubes. The tubes get coated with carbon, Foster. They also get coated with nuclear fuel. We use thorium. Thorium is radioactive. I won’t give you a lecture on radioactivity, Foster.
Got that?" The Connie replied, "Suppose I refuse?" Rip put his space knife against the man’s stomach. "Then we’ll get them with rockets. But you won’t care because you won’t know it." The truth was, Santos couldn’t hope to get them all with his rockets. They might overcome the Connies in hand-to-hand fighting, but there would be a cost to pay in Planeteer casualties.
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