Roger peered around the edge of the baffling shields. The power deck was
empty. He edged out and stood upright, eyes moving constantly for signs
of Miles.
No longer needing the cumbersome space suit, he stripped it off and
walked across the deck to the ladder. He stopped to listen again but
there was only the sound of the rockets under emergency space drive. A
quick glance at the control panel told him that the ship was hurtling
through space at a fantastic speed. Satisfied that Miles was nowhere
near, Roger gripped the rocketman's wrench tightly and began climbing
slowly and cautiously.
When he reached the next deck, he raised his head through the hatch
slowly. Then, in one quick movement, he pulled himself up on the deck
and ran for cover behind a small locker to his right. Above him, through
the open network of frames and girders, he could see the control deck,
but Miles was nowhere in sight.
Something on the opposite side of the ship caught his eye. Miles' space
suit hung on its rack, the heavy fish-bowllike space helmet beside it in
its open locker. Roger's heart skipped a beat as he noticed the holster
for a paralo-ray gun nearby. But the large flap was closed and he could
not see if it held a gun.
[Illustration: _Slowly and cautiously he began climbing_]
The young cadet moved away from the protection of the locker and started
toward the space suit. He moved slowly, watching the upper deck where he
figured Miles would be at the control board, operating the ship.
Suddenly Miles appeared above him, walking across the open control deck
with a clip board in his hand, making a standard check of the many
instruments. Before Roger could find a hiding place, Miles saw the
cadet. He drew his paralo-ray gun quickly, firing with the speed of a
practiced hand. Roger dove toward the space suit and wrenched open the
holster but found it empty. Miles was behind him now, running down the
ladder.
Roger spun around, darted to the ladder leading to the power deck, and
just missed being hit by Miles' second shot. He jumped the ten feet to
the power deck and darted behind the huge bank of atomic motors.
Miles came down the ladder slowly, gun leveled, eyes searching the deck.
He stopped with his back to the rocket motors and called, "All right,
Manning, come on out. If you come out without any trouble, I won't
freeze you. I'll just tie you up again."
Roger was silent, gripping the wrench tightly and praying for a chance
to strike. Miles still remained in one position, protected by the motor
housing.
"I'm going to count five, Manning!" he shouted. "Then I'll hunt you down
and freeze you solid."
Gripping the wrench tightly and raising it above his head, Roger eased
out from his hiding place and slipped across the floor lightly. He was
within four feet of Miles when the black-suited spaceman spun around
and stepped back quickly. "Sucker," he snarled, and fired.
Roger stood motionless, his arm still raised, the wrench falling to the
deck. Miles stuck his face close to Roger's head and said, "I don't know
how you got here, but it doesn't make any difference now. In a little
while you and your pal, Corbett, are going for a swim out in space."
Holding Roger by the arm, he tipped the boy over and lowered him to the
deck. Roger's arm stuck up like the branch of a tree. Miles stood over
him, flipped on the neutralizer charge of the gun, and fired again,
releasing Roger from the paralyzing effect of the ray.
The young cadet began to shake violently and through his chattering
teeth he muttered a space oath. Miles only grinned.
"Just wanted you to make yourself comfortable, Manning," he said. He
flipped the gun to direct charge again and pointed it at the boy. Seeing
it was useless to try and jump the burly spaceman, Roger relaxed and
stretched out on the deck. Miles fired again calmly, and after testing
the effect of the ray with his toe, he turned to the ladder.
As the spaceman climbed back to the control deck, Roger, though in a
paralyzed state, could hear the communicator loud-speaker paging Miles.
* * * * *
"Come in, Quent! This is Ross! Come in!"
Tom Corbett sat bound and gagged in the copilot's chair of the black
ship, listening to Miles call again and again over the audioceiver. The
fact that Miles was identifying himself as Ross puzzled the young cadet
and he wondered if it was an alias. Tom was even more puzzled when
Miles addressed the person he was calling as Quent.
"This is Ross! Acknowledge, Quent! Come in!"
Static spluttered over the loud-speaker and then a clear, harsh voice
that was a perfect imitation, answered, "I read you, Ross," it said.
"Where are you?"
Tom watched as Miles made a hasty check on the astrogation chart. "Space
quadrant four," he replied. "Chart C for Charley! Where are you?"
"Same space quadrant, but on chart B for Baker," came the reply. "I
think we can make visual contact on radar in above five minutes. Make
the usual radar signal for identification. O.K.?"
"Good!" the _Space Knight_ pilot replied. "What course are you on?"
There was a pause and then the voice answered, "South southwest. Speed,
emergency maximum."
"Very well. I will adjust course to meet you. But what's the hurry?"
asked Tom's captor.
"Better get out of space as soon as possible."
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
Tom listened intently. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize the
charts and space quadrants he had heard mentioned. He knew the quadrants
by heart, and knew that he was close to the asteroid belt. But each
quadrant had at least a dozen or more charts, each one taking in a huge
area of space.
"Is Brett with you?" asked the voice over the audioceiver.
"No. I'll tell you about it when we get together. All the rockets in
space broke loose up there on Titan for a while."
"What do you mean? Hey! I think I just picked you up on my radar!" said
the voice over the loud-speaker. "Give me the identification signal."
Tom watched Miles go to the radarscope and make a minute adjustment. The
voice came over the loud-speaker again. "That's you, all right. Cut back
to minimum speed and I'll maneuver to your space lock."
"Very well," replied the spaceman on the _Space Knight_.
He cut the rockets and in a matter of minutes the ship was bumped
heavily as contact was made. The voice over the communicator announced
the two space vessels had been coupled. "Open your air lock and come
aboard."
"You come aboard my ship," said Miles. "We've got the stuff here."
"O.K. But I have to go below and wake up that jerk, Manning."
"Wake him up?"
"Yeah. I got him frozen."
"All right, make it snappy."
Miles turned to look at Tom, a sneer on his face. "I'm giving you a
break, Corbett," he said. "You're going to swim with your cadet buddy.
You'll have company!"
Gagged, Tom could only glare his hatred at the black-suited spaceman. In
a moment he heard the air lock open below and then footsteps clattered
up the ladder to the control deck.
The hatch opened and Roger stumbled inside. He saw Tom immediately and
yelled, "Tom! What are--" Suddenly he stopped. He looked at the man
standing beside Tom and gasped in astonishment.
Tom watched the hatch as Roger's captor stepped inside. What he saw made
him twist around in his chair and stare at the man beside him, utterly
bewildered.
"_Twins!_" cried Roger. "Identical twins."
The man stepped through the hatch and walked over to his brother. They
shook hands and slapped each other on the back.
"What happened to Charley, Ross?" asked Quent Miles.
"Just a minute, Quent," replied his brother. He turned and grinned at
Tom and Roger. "Surprised, huh? Don't let it bother you. We've been
driving people crazy ever since we were born. Does this tell you how we
won the race?"
"T-t-twin pilots," stuttered Tom in amazement. "And twin ships?"
"Exactly." Ross laughed. "Pretty smart, eh?"
"Never mind them now," snarled Quent. "I've been sitting up there on
that asteroid rock talking to myself. What happened to Charley?"
"Take it easy, will you, Quent?" said Ross. "I want to have some fun."
He turned to Manning. "Untie Corbett and get on the other side of the
deck. Have yourselves a nice long talk before you take your last walk."
Roger slowly bent over to untie Tom, muttering a space oath under his
breath. The two brothers retired to the opposite side of the control
deck and sat down. Ross kept his paralo-ray pistol in his hand and never
once took his eyes off the two cadets.
"Well, what happened?" demanded Quent. "What are you doing here with
Corbett and where in the blazes is Charley?"
"Charley is back on Titan, and probably dead," replied Ross easily. "He
wouldn't pay any attention to us when we suggested plugging up the old
tunnels when we started mining that uranium, so the oxygen which we were
sucking off from the main screen supply took too much. The screens
started to go. Practically the whole city is flooded with ammonia gas
and it's being abandoned."
Roger and Tom stood quietly, listening, and when Roger heard the news he
turned to Tom with a questioning look on his face. Tom merely nodded
grimly.
"But what are you doing here with this load of pitchblende?" Quent
persisted.
"Everything would have been all right, even with the screens letting
go," explained Ross, "if it hadn't been for Corbett and that big jerk
Astro. They followed me out to the warehouse and down into the mine.
Good thing we caught them, or we'd be on our way to a prison asteroid
right now."
Quent glared over at Tom. "And Charley spilled the beans about the whole
thing, eh?"
"Not exactly, but the Solar Guard knows enough to be suspicious,"
replied Ross. "We had some trouble with the radiation-detection gear and
wanted to haul it out to the hide-out for Manning to check. We decided
to bring out as much of the stuff as we had mined, and when we caught
Corbett and Astro snooping around, we made them load the ship. Corbett,
here, got smart and Astro escaped. In the fight, Charley fell out of the
ship. I don't know if he got away or not."
"Do we have a whole shipload of the stuff?" asked Quent.
Ross grinned. "About two million credits' worth."
Quent rubbed his hands together. "We're in clover." He laughed and
slapped his brother on the back. "Well, I suppose the Solar Guard is
looking for us by now?"
Ross grinned. "Right. So we pull the old trick, eh? We have two very
likely prospects right there." He pointed to Roger and Tom.
"What is that supposed to mean?" snapped Roger.
"You'll find out, squirt," sneered Quent Miles.
"Wait a minute, Quent," said Ross. "I just thought of something. No one
knows there are two of us, except these two punks here. We can't work
the old gag. We can only use one of them."
"How do you mean?"
"Simple. The Solar Guard thinks Manning took it on the lam from
Ganymede, right?"
Quent nodded.
"Well, we take Manning, dress him up in one of our outfits and stick him
aboard the empty ship alongside. The ship blows up, and should they find
anything of Manning, he'll be dressed like you, or me, and that will end
the situation right there. Later, we can dump Corbett out in a space
suit with a little oxygen, and write a note, sticking it in his glove.
When they find him, they'll think he got away from Quent Miles, and when
his oxygen gave out, wrote the note giving all the details. And who can
say No, since Quent Miles, as such, will be dead?"
"End to the affair!" shouted Quent. "That's perfect."
The audioceiver behind them crackled into life, and there was a clear,
piercing signal, a sign that an emergency transmission was taking over
all channels. The signal continued until the clear, strong voice of
Commander Walters flooded the control deck of the ship.
"Attention! Attention! This is Commander Walters of the Solar Guard!
Attention all Solar Guard units in space quadrants one through
seven--repeat, all ships in quadrants one through seven. This is
emergency alert for the rocket ship _Space Knight_, believed to be
heading for the asteroid belt. All ships are to institute an immediate
search of quadrants one through seven for the _Space Knight_ and arrest
any and all persons aboard. Repeat. All ships...."
Ross Miles rose up and snapped off the audioceiver. "Come on. We've got
to get out of here!"
"What about them?" asked Quent, pointing to Roger and Tom. "Will we have
time to--?"
"Plenty of time," said Ross coldly. "Blast 'em now."
"With pleasure," replied Quent Miles, taking his gun from his holster.
"Jump, Roger!" shouted Tom.
Both boys threw themselves sideways as Miles leveled his gun.
Tom plunged headlong through the hatch door and scrambled down the
ladder. Roger tried to follow, but Quent fired as Roger started to jump
feet first through the hatch. His body became rigid as he tumbled
through the hatch. Tom looked up just in time to break his unit mate's
fall, but seeing that it would be useless to stay with him, left him on
the deck and turned to flee through the depths of the black ship.