For just inside those glass doors, Chief Philip Baxter was standing
with his hands raised over his head, and there were men approaching
him with drawn weapons. And not the rebels, either. His own security
guards! IS had won.
"Hey!" said Ted, tugging at my arm. "They must have gotten my message!
Lucky thing the rebels were the losers, hey?"
I spun about, giving him a dazed look. "What message?" was all I could
choke out.
"In the _Phobos II_," he said happily. "I scratched it on the wall over
my takeoff rack."
"I didn't see any message," I complained.
"It was in code," he explained, with the head-shaking condescension
toward an idiot of which only small boys are capable. "Snow and me, we
have a secret code."
"I know that!" I growled. "But how in the world--"
He gave a lazy what-does-it-matter shrug. "You probably didn't
notice it because you didn't know the code. Otherwise, it looks like
chicken-scratches. But I was pretty sure a good cryptograph man would
figure it out. It's only a substitution code, after all."
"And what was the message?" I said, repressing a sudden urge to swear
at him.
Ted yawned idly and scratched his stomach. "I just said: 'Help! We have
been kidnapped by Chief Baxter of Interplanetary Security. Sincerely
yours, Ted White, Space Scout First Class.' It wasn't the truth, of
course, but I figured it'd get an investigation started. And then
Baxter's goose would be cooked."
Before I could mutter a small curse, there came a sudden blast of
energy from the terminal building, and the glass doors came flying
open. I saw a figure come dashing out of there, and realized that
Baxter was once more on the loose.
"The shield!" I groaned.
His hands-over-the-head had been only a reflex action. I only gave one
quick glance toward the terminal lobby, where the remaining men were
just getting their wits about them, then I took off after him again.
It was going to be a close thing, I realized. He had a good lead on
me. At the end of the strip opposite to where we'd emerged from the
labyrinth stood a ship. It was Baxter's personal ship, marked with
the colors and seal of IS. If he once got aboard, he could get away
forever. But even worse, he could train his ship's artillery-size
collapser on the entire spaceport, and blast us all out of existence.
I could see I wasn't going to make it. He was a full hundred yards
ahead of me. By the time I reached the ship, he'd be pressing the
starter button, and all I'd get for my efforts would be the searing
fires of the rockets in my face as the great ship lifted.
Then a bounding, red-glinting form was whizzing past me, covering
thirty feet at a leap. Clatclit was on the trail of the man who had
threatened his destruction back in the labyrinth.
Shrill, furious clackings came from within those sharp-fanged jaws as
the sugarfoot rapidly closed the gap between himself and the man.
And still, something kept me racing across that field, some
subconscious foreboding that things weren't finished yet. Then Baxter
came to a halt, still twenty yards from the ship, and turned about,
something in his hand from the ship-readying cart. The hose for the
water tanks!
"Clatclit!" I yelled frantically.
As if not realizing his danger, the hurtling form of my alien friend
zoomed down toward Baxter, powerful claws held wide for grasping his
enemy.
Things happened terribly fast. From behind me, I heard a scream, and
then a curse. I staggered, and turned. Snow was wrestling on the
ground with a Security Agent, one of the still-shaken survivors of the
backlash of Baxter's shield. Evidently, he'd been about to try another
shot at the fleeing Security Chief, and Snow, with unladylike good
sense, had given him the benefit of one of her brother-training flying
tackles, before we all died in a new rebounding ray.
A wild trilling whistle came from the ship, and I jerked my head about.
Baxter had let loose with the hose, and Clatclit was rolling on the
ground, in a wild effort to shake the caustic droplets from his melting
scales.
My head was spinning. Which was to turn? Snow was in a furious fight
with a full-grown man behind me, and my best friend was being dissolved
before me. I didn't know what to do. Should I run and stop her from
being vaporized, or him from being turned into taffy?
Baxter took the decision out of my hands.
"Delvin!" his voice came.
I turned back toward him. Clatclit, still shuddering with the shock of
that water-spray, was facing me, Baxter behind him with an arm across
the sugarfoot's throat. And in Baxter's other hand he held the water
hose, its pistol-control barrel aimed right at Clatclit's eyes.
"Tell the others to stand back," he shouted, "or I'll burn your
friend's eyes out!"
By now, Snow had explained the situation somewhat to the guard, I
guess, because she and he came abreast of me and stopped, listening to
Baxter's threat.
The guard's gun came up swiftly.
"Don't, you fool!" I said, my hand clamping on his wrist. "He's got a
shield!"
"I know that," said the guard, whom I suddenly recognized as the
corporal who had led his men to investigate the blast in the upper
corridor. "I'm only going to disable the ship!"
"No," Baxter called. "If the ship goes, then so do this creature's
eyes!"
The corporal looked at me, wavering. "It's--it's only a sugarfoot," he
said, uncertainly.
"Only a--!" I shrieked. How could I tell this idiot what I felt for
Clatclit! "You'll shoot over my bloody corpse!"
"We can't let Baxter get aloft in that thing!" the corporal said
beseechingly. "If he does, we're all dead!"
I was trembling with fear and frustrated rage. Baxter was backing
toward the ship, taking the weakened Clatclit backward with him. They
were only a few feet from the entry port, now.
Then my hand went out, and I took the corporal's collapser from him. He
stared at me confusedly, but let me take it.
"Everybody hit the dirt!" I said, lifting the weapon and taking careful
aim. Guard, girl and Scouts took a dive.
I was neither aiming at Baxter, nor his ship. The blazing bolt of
energy from the collapser, an instant before I joined Snow, the
corporal and the Space Scouts on the ground, went where I'd intended it
to.
Into the nearest supporting girder of the massive converter.
As in a slow-motion nightmare, the structure began to tilt with the
uneven distribution of weight, toward the spot where a supporting
leg should have been, and then the brightly burning rays of the
ore-converting head came arcing down in a deadly sweep that passed over
Baxter, Clatclit, and the ship, narrowly missing the spot where the
rest of us lay. Then the power cables tore away, and the beam went out.
It was all over. The ship, of aluminum-magnesium alloys, was in
perfectly fine shape. Clatclit, of pure sugar construction, was, if a
bit water-sick, alive and healthy.