The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

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      Escape

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      Space-suited complete except for helmets, and with those ready to hand, Kinnison and vanBuskirk sat in the tiny control room of their lifeboat as it drifted inert through inter-stellar space. Kinnison was poring over charts taken from the Brittania’s pilot room; the sergeant was gazing idly into a detector plate.

      “No clear ether yet, I don’t suppose,” the captain remarked, as he rolled up a chart and tossed it aside.

      “No let-up for a second; they’re not taking any chances at all. Found out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn’t it?”

      “Yeah. Not close, though, even for a ship—out of the question for us. Nothing much inhabited around here, either, to say nothing of being civilized. Scarcely one to the block. Don’t think I’ve ever been out here before; have you?”

      “Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it’ll be before it’s safe for us to blast off?”

      “Can’t start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power.”

      “We may be in for a spell of waiting, then .” VanBuskirk broke off suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. “Help, Noshabkeming, help! Look at that!”

      “Blinding blue blazes!” Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate. “With all macro-universal space and all eternity to play around in, why in all space’s hells did she have to come back here and now?”

      For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay the Brittania and her two pirate captors!

      “Better go free, hadn’t we?” whispered vanBuskirk.

      “Daren’t!” Kinnison grunted. “At this range they’d spot us in a split second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal’s our only chance. We’ll be able to dodge any flying chunks, I think . there she goes!”

      From their coign of vantage the two Patrolmen saw their gallant ship’s terrific end; saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying fragment; saw the other escape inertialess; saw her disappear.

      The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid, staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute after minute passed and nothing happened.

      “Why don’t they do something?” he burst out, finally. “They know we’re here—there isn’t a detector made that could be badly enough out of order to miss us at this distance. Why, they can see us from there, with no detectors at all!”

      “Asleep, unconscious, or dead,” vanBuskirk diagnosed, “and they’re not asleep. Believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. She must’ve been hit hard enough to lay her whole crew out cold . and say, she’s got a standard emergency inlet port—how about it, huh?”

      Kinnison’s mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, their only duty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft, detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain should they attempt flight with all nearby space so full of enemy fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, vanBuskirk’s wild idea was actually the safest course!

      “All right, Bus, we’ll try it. We’ll take a chance on going free and using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into the lock with your magnets.”

      The lifeboat flashed against the pirate’s armored side and the sergeant, by deftly manipulating his two small hand-magnets, worked it rapidly along the steel plating, toward the driving jets. There, in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was indeed the emergency inlet port, with its Galactic Standard controls.

      In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of relief.

      “Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too,” he went on, eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of the bodies, he propped it against a panel thus obscuring a multiple lens.

      “That’s the eye overlooking the control room,” he explained unnecessarily. “We can’t cut their headquarters visi-beams without creating suspicion, but we don’t want them looking around in here until after we’ve done a little stage-setting.”

      “But they’ll get suspicious anyway when we go free,” vanBuskirk protested.

      “Sure, but we’ll arrange for that later. First thing we’ve got to do is to make sure that all the crew except possibly one or two in here, are really dead. Don’t beam unless you have to; we want to make it look as though everybody got killed or fatally injured in the crash.”

      A complete tour of the vessel, with a grim and distasteful accompaniment, was made. Not all of the pirates were dead, or even disabled; but, unarmored as they were and taken completely by surprise, the survivors could offer but little resistance. A cargo port was opened and the Brittania’s lifeboat was drawn inside. Then back to the control room, where Kinnison picked up another body and strode to the main panels.

      “This fellow,” he announced, “was hurt badly, but managed to get to the board. He threw in the free switch, like this, and then full-blast drive, so. Then he pulled himself over to the steering globe and tried to lay course back toward headquarters, but couldn’t quite make it. He died with the course set right there. Not exactly toward Sol, you notice—that would be too much of a coincidence—but close enough to help a lot. His bracelet got caught in the guard, like this. There is clear evidence as to exactly what happened. Now we’ll get out of range of that eye, and let the body that’s covering it float away naturally.”

      “Now what?” asked vanBuskirk, after the two had hidden themselves.

      “Nothing whatever until we have to,” was the reply. “Wish we could go on like this for a couple of weeks, but no chance. Headquarters will get curious pretty quick as to why we’re shoving off.”

      Even as he spoke a furious burst of noise erupted from the communicator; a noise which meant:

      “Vessel F47U596! Where are you going, and why? Report!”

      At that brusk command one of the still forms struggled weakly to its knees and tried to frame words, but fell back dead.

      “Perfect!” Kinnison breathed into vanBuskirk’s ear. “Couldn’t have been better. Now they’ll probably take their time about rounding us up . maybe we can get back to somewhere near Tellus, after all . Listen, here comes some more.” The communicator was again sending. “See if you can get a line on their transmitter.”

      “If there are any survivors able to report, do so at once!” Kinnison understood the dynamic cone to say. Then, the voice moderating as though the speaker had turned from his microphone to СКАЧАТЬ