Trent waited. He didn't expect bombardment. It would be rather futile. He felt a certain detached anticipation which, had he known about it, would have been interestingly similar to the reactions of an ancestor of his some centuries before. That other Captain Trent had a half-keg of gunpowder beside him, and when the moment was just right he'd touch a slow-match to its fuse and drop it into the midst of an approaching body of men who'd arrogantly forced their way into a place where they didn't belong. He, also, waited in a peculiarly detached calm.
But the Captain Trent of the Yarrow and the Hecla had longer to wait. The other ship came nearer and Trent saw what only previous victims of this particular ship had ever exactly seen. He saw the pirate in the light of between-the-stars. It had been sleek and somehow it was still deadly to look at.
It circled the Hecla, and he saw welds and patches on its outer bow-plating. It was definitely the ship the Yarrow had rammed, repaired in space by men who deserved credit for that achievement. But they were not otherwise to be admired.
It circled again. It could see the Hecla's port-side airlock door left open. No ship which was occupied would have an airlock open to space. But if a ship was abandoned, the last man to leave it would hardly bother to close such a door behind him.
It was convincing. The pirate came to an apparent stop a half mile off. It appeared to drift backward, and then that drift was over-corrected, and it was a long time before the two ships floated almost exactly still in relation to each other.
Then lifeboat blisters opened their mussel-shell-shaped covers. Two spaceboats came out and moved toward the Hecla. Trent murmured into his phone. It wouldn't go outside the ship.
"Boats approaching," he said curtly. "I won't be able to use this helmet-phone after they board us, or their helmets will pick it up. Stand by to carry out orders when I give the word."
Silence. Then clankings. Trent heard them by solid conduction as he made his way along those un-obvious passages in the bilges which he and all his crewmen had already memorized. He touched his helmet to a metal wall. Yes. A spaceboat had tied up to the open airlock. He heard metal-soled boots on the airlock floor. Men came into the ship. The lock worked again, though there was no air for it to keep imprisoned. More men came in. The second spaceboat was lying a little way off until the first should report all clear.
Trent remained perfectly still, listening. He was in a narrow passageway by which the Hecla's cargo holds could be bypassed. He heard men tramping all over the ship: the control room—airless; the engine room—airless. The men who'd been rewinding the overdrive coil were gone, of course. They'd left the coil looking as if no hand had touched it since it blew—its metal case was still bulged and discolored from heat—but they were only behind the engine room sidewall. The pirate crewmen went into the living quarters. They were airless too, and they'd been swept and garnished so that they looked exactly as the Hecla had looked when it was a full-powered, fully manned and fully loaded ship of space, complacently speeding from one world to another. But then, of course, her hull had been full of air.
There were voices in Trent's helmet-phones. Men reported the ship empty. One man went to the airlock to open its outer door so his spacephone message could be picked up by the nearby pirate ship. Somebody'd tried to use the ship's space-communication equipment to call the pirate, waiting half a mile away. But there was no air to carry sound to its microphone.
"Maybe a shell cut a wire," said an authoritative voice. "No," said another voice. "No air." Yet another voice said, "No passengers either." Then various voices reported, "All clear aft."
"Nobody aboard."
"All set. I think there's a little air aft, but I'm not sure."
The authoritative voice said, "Some air aft? See if you can build up pressure. Maybe there're no shot-holes aft."
Listening tranquilly, Trent found that the interior of the ship sounded like a very busy place. Men moved here and there and everywhere, exchanging comments by space-phone, but there was no cause for suspicion. The comments ceased to be about the condition of the ship and became comments on the apparent luxury and riches of the food supply, and the practically bulging cargo holds, and so on.
The authoritative voice said, "Call in the other boat. Have 'em tell the ship everything's all right except the communicator. That'll work when there's air."
Trent stayed quite still, listening with a fine satisfaction as the second spaceboat made fast outside the airlock. The spacesuit tanks of his followers had a good two hours of air in them. He considered that he and they could remain completely out of sight while the pirate crewmen made free with the Hecla. And if the pirate came alongside to take on cargo, in a fine conviction that it had exclusive possession of the derelict Hecla…
Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. Within minutes of their boarding, the boarding party had proved past question that the Hecla was as empty of occupants as of air. There'd been no doubt about it to begin with. Things had to be that way! The second boatload of spacemen came stamping aboard through the airlock. The pirate crew—this more or less astonishing Trent—set about plugging the shot-holes their ship's gun had made, to restore the hull to air-tightness. It took a considerable time. Then they took air from the reserve tanks and filled the ship with it so the Hecla became re-filled with breathable air, icy, from its expansion from enormously high pressure to fourteen pounds to the square inch, but still very breathable. And then the men who believed that they were the new owners of the Hecla got cheerfully out of their spacesuits and began to examine their prize for objects of value. Some went to the cargo holds and began to smash open crates at random. That wouldn't have been really practical in space armor. Some searched the passenger quarters. They were disappointed in the loot found there, though, because by their own doing traffic in the Pleiads had been cut by ninety per cent, and passenger traffic by more than that. But the authoritative voice growled at them. It named two men and commanded them to the engine room. They were to examine the overdrive coil in detail. Moreover, they were to see what damage had been done to the Lawlor-drive unit.
Waiting and listening, Trent was moved to swear. He'd had high hopes. But anybody who uncovered the overdrive coil could see that it was almost rewound. A glance at the Lawlor engine would show that it had been worked on recently. The order meant that the pirates didn't intend merely to loot and abandon the ship, but to make use of it. Perhaps to change into it!
There was only one thing to be done. He spoke into the helmet-phone. His followers could hear it. The pirates out of space armor wouldn't. He turned on his spacephone and said, "Let's go!"
Then he appeared suddenly in the living quarters, where two of the pirates jumped visibly and plunged away in the panic of men who have put off their weapons with their spacesuits and are faced by a man who hasn't. Trent used a police weapon. It was necessary for him and his followers to be victors in the ambush they'd made. So when Trent pushed down the triggers of the gas-pistols at his belt, they didn't emit flames or thermite bullets. They flung out clouds of thick fog-gas, mixed to exactly the most efficient combination of dense fog laced with sneeze- and tear-gas. Which nobody could defy.
Those two pirates went down and kicked and jerked in convulsive sneezings they had no power to stop. Their eyes streamed tears. Trent felt a queasy disappointment. They were pirates, and they specifically would have murdered Marian as they'd murdered enough others. But instead of being captured in proper battle, he'd trapped them like rats and they were as unharmed and as helpless as petty criminals in the hands of planetary police.