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Updated: May 19, 2025
The squads were on duty somewhere. He ran for the ladder to the lower level, took the wrong one, and ended up in a snapper-boat port. He had trained in the deadly little fighting rockets, and they never failed to interest him. But there wasn’t time to admire them now. He went back up the ladder with two strong heaves, found the right ladder, and dropped down without touching.
Rip put his helmet against that of the man who had given the surrender order and demanded, "What's that light?" "The cruiser wants us." Rip considered demanding that the Connie answer, then thought better of it. He would do it himself. After all, they had hostages. The cruiser wouldn't take any further action. He climbed into the snapper-boat and hunted for the plug-in terminal.
He had to say something that would identify him beyond a doubt. The snapper-boat was closing in slowly. Rip knew the pilot and gunner must be tense, frightened, ready to blast with their guns at the first wrong move on the asteroid. He groped with his good arm and turned up his helmet communicator to full volume.
The two of them stepped away from the cave and stood in full view as the snapper-boat moved cautiously down toward the asteroid. Rip planned what he would say. "Commander O'Brine, this is Foster!" No, that wouldn't do. Connies would know that Kevin O'Brine commanded the Scorpius, and if they had taken over the Planeteers on the asteroid, they would also have learned Rip's name.
He fitted himself into the tight pilot seat of the snapper-boat while Santos climbed in behind. Then, handling the controls with the skill of long practice, he lifted the tiny fighting rocket above the asteroid and waited for the landing boat. When it joined up, Rip led the way to safety. As he cut his exhaust to wait for the explosion, he sighted past the snapper-boat's nose to the asteroid.
The snapper-boat changed direction, and for a fraction of a second stern and side tubes "fought" each other, making the boat yaw wildly, then it straightened out on a new course. "They’re Using Fire Bombs," Muttered Koa. Koa exclaimed, "That’s a drone!" Rip got it then. A pilotless snapper-boat! That’s why its actions were a little uneven. Only one thing could explain its deliberate slowness.
The fighting rocket drew closer, cut in its nose tube, and hovered only a few hundred feet above the Planeteers. Rip summoned enough strength to make his voice sharp and clear. His words sped through space into the bubble of the pilot, echoed in the helmet and were picked up by the pilot’s microphone, then hurled through the snapper-boat circuit through space to the control room of the cruiser.
He said coolly, "If you had brains in your head instead of high vacuum, you’d know that Planeteers never surrender. Blast away, you filthy space pirate!" He jerked the plug loose, hesitated for a second over whether or not to take the snapper-boat, and decided against it. He wasn’t familiar with Connie controls and there wasn’t time to experiment. He headed for the cave as fast as he could glide.
A charge hit the boat aft and blew its stern tubes off completely. And at the same moment, a Connie gunner got a perfect bead on the snapper-boat. Space blew up in Rip's face. The snapper-boat slewed wildly as the Connie shot took effect. Rip worked his controls frantically, trying to straighten the rocket out more by instinct than anything else.
When the main mass of fuel caught, the rocket would become an inferno. Rip smashed at the escape hatch above his head, grabbed propulsion tubes from the rack, and called, "Now!" He pulled the release on his harness, stood up on the seat, and thrust with all his leg power. He catapulted out of the burning snapper-boat into space.
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