"We'll give you receipts for what we take," said the voice from the ceiling loudspeaker. It was almost openly mocking, now. "You'll get what's coming to you. All you have to do is go on to Loren and ask for it."
Trent clicked off the communicator and swung about in the pilot's chair.
"On the way out to put us on board the Hecla when she was abandoned," he said coldly to the mate, "I had you pack the bow with bales of stuff in case a gun opened on you from ahead. None of that's been shifted, has it?"
"No sir," said the mate stolidly. "All of it's still there. You've got him sure our overdrive's blown, sir."
"And if we went into it," said Trent acidly, "he could really blow it just by following us!" He pushed the all-speaker button. "All hands! We've been stopped by something that says its the Bear, of Loren. It says we're to be boarded. All hands get ready to get out of sight and come out again on call."
He swung the Yarrow to face the approaching and enlarging other ship of space. He yearned fiercely to destroy it, but at that moment the Yarrow's own prospects looked dim. For one thing, the first freebooter he'd encountered had a gun, a cannon firing solid shot. In a sense it was an antiquity. It was probably of a design from the twentieth century, when guns reached their highest development before being replaced by rocket-missiles. Its shells could penetrate both skins of the Hecla but had little power to do damage beyond that. One of the other pirate's shells had bounced around in the Hecla's engine room without doing any particular harm. But those shells could let all the air out of a ship.
Perhaps this second pirate ship also had a gun. Against that twentieth-century weapon—outmoded as it was—Trent had prepared a nineteenth-century defense. There'd been a civil war in a nation called the United States, back on Earth, and in that war much action took place on the continental rivers. For this specialized fighting, river-steamers were converted into fighting ships by piled-up bales of a crude textile fabric then much in use. The river steamers became "cotton-clad" gunboats as contrasted with iron-clad ones and did good service. Trent had packed the bow of the Yarrow with similar materials. They should limit the penetration of solid shot fired from straight ahead.
The other ship was plainly visible now. It swiftly increased in size. There was no sign of injuries to or repairs of its bow portion, so it couldn't be the ship that had stopped the Hecla. It was larger, too. There were, then, at least two space craft operating out of some unknown base. There might be a number more.
The other ship swept to a position a mile to starboard. It checked there and lay still. The mussel-shell-shaped boat-blister covers opened, revealing spaceboats Trent snapped into the all-ship speakers, "Men with rocket-launchers to the airports. Rope yourselves safe, and be ready to open the outer doors and start shooting."
He grimaced. He'd bought small arms on Dorade, but they'd been designed for police use. They'd be totally useless against a ship, of course. But they might do damage to a spaceboat.
He switched the communicator on again. The voice rasped, "I'm telling you—open your cargo-doors! Open your airlocks! There's a boarding-party coming."
"Acknowledge," said Trent.
He covered the communicator microphone with his hand and gave short, savage commands. He opened an after cargo door. It stayed open. A second door started to open and apparently stuck. It went back to closed position; It partly opened and closed again. This could be seen from the pirate ship. It should be taken as attempted obedience. An airlock door opened. Another. The locks showed no spacesuited figures in them.
The pirate's spaceboats, three of them, moved away from their storage blisters. They came steadily toward the Yarrow. The two ships were infinitesimal specks in immensity. The spaceboats were smaller than specks. The blazing double sun alone was huge. It seemed nearby. All the rest of the galaxy appeared to consist only of uncountable dots of light of every imaginable color and degree of brightness, unthinkably remote. To someone with a taste for comparisons, this action was taking place in such isolation, such loneliness, such enormous nothingness that the isolation of a ship in overdrive seemed companionable by contrast.
The spaceboats were halfway to the Yarrow. Trent barked into the all-speaker microphone, "Close face-plates! Take ordered action!"
And he acted as he spoke. The Yarrow spun like a top to face the pirate ship and plunged toward it at maximum acceleration in Lawlor drive. But the motion seemed horribly deliberate. Lifetimes seemed to pass at intervals that were only heartbeats. The Yarrow rushed upon the pirate—but not quite exactly. She would ride down and destroy the nearest spaceboat first. The pirate did have a gun. It flashed, and there was that hundredth-of-a-second flaring out of smoke before the utter emptiness of space snatched it away to nothingness.
A shell hit the Yarrow. Its impact could be heard or felt all over the ship. Spacesuited men appeared suddenly in the open airlocks. Rockets—only police-rockets, but still rockets—streaked away from the open lockdoors. Four… eight… a dozen. One hit a spaceboat. There was a soundless flash. A shaped-charge satchel bomb went off inside the spaceboat. It had been meant for the destruction of the Yarrow should her crew resist the entrance of their murderers. But one spaceboat had ceased to exist. The Yarrow's bow swung to bring a second spaceboat to close range for the rocket-launchers on the port side. The smoke-jetting rockets plunged. One of them exploded just the bare instant before another arrived at the very same spot. It was pure chance, but the spaceboat's back was broken, and other rockets hit, too. It was not possible to estimate the total damage from the Yarrow.
That elderly merchant ship continued to hurl itself toward the pirate. The pirate's gun flashed again. It was a hit. And again, a hit. And again. Every shell hit home. Every one went into her bows and vanished in the bales of textiles and crates of other cargo packed to serve as improvised armor plate.
In the control room the instrument board showed three bow compartments losing air. But the Yarrow gained speed every second. The pirate's gun flashed and flashed, and every powder-flash was followed by the crashing impact of a projectile. But the Yarrow could take this kind of gunfire for a while, anyhow the pirate couldn't take ramming. It went into overdrive while the charging Yarrow was still two hundred yards away. Trent drove his ship fiercely through the emptiness where the pirate ship had been. He swung around and headed vengefully for the third of the spaceboats the pirate had put into space. The Yarrow passed it at a hundred yards' distance and rockets flashed and streaked toward it, past it, and into it, but it seemed mostly into it. What was left did not look like a spaceboat any longer, and the Yarrow seemingly had all of space to itself.
The mate seemed pleased. He said relievedly, "I'll take some hands and plug those shell-holes, Captain?"
"Not much use," said Trent, coldly. "If we go into overdrive our coil will blow, unless the pirate goes slinking away. But as long as he's got his gun and shells he won't do that. We killed off a good lot of his men in those boats, though!"