"I met a lot of friends I knew on Mars, and made some new ones when I'd disposed of the ship's cargo. The boys and I have been cruising around for some time now, doing nothing spectacular—it doesn't pay.
We've been knocking off a ship here and there, laying the blame square onto a rival or somebody. Our home is still Pluto—we don't like it, in a way, for what it did to us, but in a way we do because nobody else does, and it's so damn far away from anything half the time.
"I'm sorry that you didn't get the Carpathia. I thought that with a father like yours you could fly sideways and beat any other scow in the ether to a contract."
She stared at the madman. "What did you know about my father?"
"He was my instructor on Venus. He got me out of a piece of trouble when I killed a man that swore at me. He was a good instructor, and I'm pleased that I have the chance to do him a favor through you. You see, I wrecked that bullion ship for you. Then I was going to pick you up and the junk, but I see I've only got you. Well—perhaps that's enough. You can't return to Mars even if you want to. I suppose the police have their cruisers out looking for you and your crew. I buttered the crime onto you for both our advantages. I hope you don't mind?"
"No," she said, "and you wanted to do my father a favor by permitting me to join your—band?"
"Exactly," came from the muffled features. "And you will?"
The girl sobbed, "Never! Space is clean and cold; why must you make it a thing of Terror? Isn't that pain enough without you and your kind?"
The pirate laughed. "The whimsical butcher is not displeased," he said.
"You will have your uses anyhow. It will be a long time before a soul suspects King Cole—the late King Cole—of the atrocities perpetrated by Miss Alice Adams and her cutthroat crew. I know how the police mind works. That's my business, now. Good day—you may ring for food." He left, and the door closed behind him.
Vainly the girl sprang to the door and tried the knob. It was locked firm.
She returned to the bed and shut her eyes, trying to blot out the memory of that grey, horribly seamed face.
In Marsport Jerry had not been idle. He had been to see the major again, and tried to convince him of the truth so self-evident to the younger man's mind, but the placid old idiot listened blandly and blankly. When Jerry was finished he said, "Through an accident, I believe, we were cut off in our telephone conversation a while ago. I was about to describe the position in which Ironface and I found ourselves—"
But Jerry was gone with great curses on his lips. Patiently Skeane sighed. It had been six years since he had been able to finish that story; the last man to hear it complete had been a convict extradited to Venus from Jupiter. Skeane had strapped him down in the little two-man rocket and whiled away the long hours of space travel with the tale in its gruesome entirety. He thought, now, that it would be nice if he could find somebody else to strap down and tell the story to. He was even a bit afraid that he was forgetting the details himself …
A taxi was driving through the muddy streets of Marsport; Jerry snapped a bill under the hackie's nose. "This for you if you step on it,"
he said. They pulled up, brakes squealing horribly, before a battered, weatherbeaten tenement. Jerry took four stairs at a time and burst into the close, dirty room. He shook the sleeping figure. "Sven! Sven, dammit! Wake up, you loose-brained lump of soggy Norwegian caviar!
We have the biggest job we've tackled yet!"
The helmsman rolled over, and dizzily asked, "We tow, Captain?"
"Yeah, we tow—a full-armed battleship that doesn't want to be towed.
Get the men to the field in twenty minutes—fare is on Leigh Salvage, Incorporated."
As the big man struggled into his clothes Jerry was down the stairs and into a taxi. "Salvage Field," he snapped, "in a helluva rush."
He had often boasted that the engines of scow Leigh were the most powerful things in the ether. Well—he would see how powerful they could be—shifting feed lines and adjusting nozzles to move the traction power, terrific as it was, into a different channel. The scow was to haul nothing but her own weight this trip, but it was essential, to put it mildly, that she haul it fast. The men lined up before her as the job neared completion. Briefly but clearly Jerry outlined the dangers and invited men to drop out.
"Wylie," he said, "since I shipped you we've been getting complaints from your quarter about work. This is going to be work the like of which you never dreamed. You can take out that pistol of yours; sure as leather you're going to us it this trip, unless somebody gets you first.
"Anybody leaving? No? Then pile in and strap tight. In ninety seconds we take off under fifteen Mars gravities acceleration."
There was a little glow in his chest. These were men—his men!
Comrades of flight and wreck, he'd stood by them and they were making good this day. And for a crazy woman? That was the part that baffled him—why? He had had practically no respect for her father; his ethics, or lack of ethics was notorious on the field. But she couldn't fly a ship! That, he said to himself, was what had convinced him of her innocence of the highly technical charge of piracy.
"Strapped in?
"Eighty-nine
"Fire!"
With a roar they took off. Such acceleration was unheard of, even on this field, where rules of astronavigation were scrapped daily and the laws of the space-lanes broken as a matter of course.
In a moment they had vanished from the sight of observers on the field; a moment more and they were into space, beyond air and warmth.
"All hands," rang out over the Leigh Salvage annunciator. "These will be battle stations when so ordered. Sven, be ready to take the tiller if anything happens to me; Wylie, choose and arm eight men to form a boarding party. Two others stand by with repair-paste in the event that our periphery is punctured. One man stand by the manual controls in case the electric board is blown by anything they have in their bag of tricks. That is all—flight stations!"
A long silence followed, Sven's hand white on the helm. "Deflect into first for particle in third," said Jerry, at length. "Meteorite." The ship shifted. "Good God, Sven—did you see that thing?" cried Jerry.
The helmsman said, puzzled, "Yes, Captain."
"But Sven—we passed it—going in the same direction! The first time I've known that to happen. Swede, we're traveling plenty fast."
5 Contact Off Pluto
Out in space time depends most of all on the man concerned, but for all those on the speeding little scow, the days flashed past. They saw Jupiter pale behind them, and Saturn, and Neptune; then, one day—
"Helmsman," said Jerry tensely, "turn control to master's board. I think I see them." Uneasily the big man surrendered the guiding of the vessel; he was the sort who likes to know what is going to happen next. Jerry's fingers touched the panel, his eyes never leaving the glinting speck far ahead of him; the speck that grew as he overhauled it with dizzying speed. His own exhausts glared less bright; he was slowing down that there might be no mistake. A telescope brought to bear on the point screened out the rocket's dazzle and enlarged the features of the vessel.
And there was something about it—he was almost sure.
He was sure. That tube astern was a chaser, meant for him and his scow. He turned on the annunciator, his jaw clenched. "Attention all hands," he said. "To battle stations. Check on your paste, repair crew; check on your weapons, boarding party. Pirate ship—" he squinted through the telescope—"Pirate Ship King Cole in sight. That is all."
He snapped on a beam of communication to the pirate ship, closing up the distance between them, and sent a call along it.