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Updated: June 27, 2025
"Who is this guy, Ross?" asked Quent, licking his lips nervously. "How does he know about us?" Ross kept his eyes on Astro, glaring at the cadet in hot fury. "I met him on a deep spacer, five years ago, when you were laid up in the hospital," he said between his teeth. "This punk was a wiper on the power deck. I was his petty officer."
Behind him trotted three couples of retainers, their cloaks also ragged fringes, their knives drawn. Standing up on the ramp to receive what could only be a formal deputation were Captain, Astrogator, Cargo-master and Engineer, the senior officers of the spacer. In the rolling periods of the Trade Lingo the torch bearer identified himself as Groft, son and heir of the late lamented Paft.
The next caisson was then towed out, set against the floating spacer, and sunk in position.
Beside her their own spacer would seem not only smaller, but battered and worn. But no Free Trader would have willingly assumed the badges of a Company man, not even for the command of such a ship fresh from the cradles of a builder. When a man went up from the training Pool for his first assignment, he was sent to the ship where his temperament, training and abilities best fitted.
There were twelve of them, alike as eggs from the same deadly clutch. Pointed like the bow of a spacer, each one swept smoothly back for its two metres of length, to a sharply chopped-off end. They were obviously incomplete, the war heads of rockets. One had its base turned towards him, and he saw six projecting studs that could be used to attach it to the missing rocket.
So why was he tormented now with all these second thoughts? Why did he feel every day less akin to the men with whom he had shared the voyage? He had had wit enough to keep his semirebellion under cover, but since he had taken the flitter into the morning sky above the landing place of the spacer, that task of self-discipline was becoming more and more difficult.
Dane thought that they would be loaded into a mobile or 'copter and taken away. But instead they were marched down, through the ranks of portable flamers, scramblers, and other equipment, to an open space where anyone on duty at the visa-screen within the control cabin of the spacer could see them.
Brion watched the spacer become a pinpoint in the sky and vanish. He tried to shake off the feeling that this was the last time he would see any of them. "Let's get out of here fast," he told Ulv, picking up the radio, "before anyone comes around to see why the ship landed." "What will you do?" Ulv asked as they went down the street towards the desert.
Sun, Hume thought, could have been reflected from some portion of the L-B. He had believed that small spacer so covered with vines and ringed in by trees that it could not have been so sighted. But a storm might have disposed of some of nature's cloaking. If so Starns' interest must be fed, he would make an ideal discoverer. "Odd." Hume produced his distance glasses. "Just where, Gentlehomo?"
Anyone having any information concerning this ship or any strange spacer report at once to the nearest Terrapolice or Patrol station. Do not take chances report any contact at once to the nearest Terrapolice or Patrol station!" "That's putting it strongly," Dane commented as he relayed the message. "Good as giving orders for us to be flamed down at sight "
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