"But--" puzzled the skipper confusedly--"how about us? I mean, are you
going to take us aboard your ship, or do we get camped on one of the
asteroids, or--"
The half-breed shrugged negligently. "Why, Captain, you wouldn't want
to desert your ship? I've always heard you Earthmen made it a point of
honor to stand by your decks. Of course I would not think of forbidding
you this signal honor."
The skipper's face turned white, but it was not fear that drained his
cheeks of color; it was righteous rage. His words exploded like a fused
hypatomic.
"_What!_ You _dare_ do a thing like this, Colonel! You accepted my
surrender under military covenant--"
"That will do, Captain!" rapped Ras Thuul. "It will do you no good to
prate of technicalities. I acknowledge but one rule of war--destroy
your enemy! When this vessel has been stripped of its fuel and
supplies, I shall turn it loose in the Bog. What happens then to it--or
you--is none of my concern. Your pleas are vain, sir!
"And now, have we seen the entire ship?"
It was his selection of the word "pleas" that ended the Old Man's
protestations. O'Hara needed no microscope to read our adversary's
character; he knew that Ras Thuul would enjoy nothing more than
listening to pleas for mercy. If we had to die, we could at least die
like men. His jaw clamped forever on argument.
"We have," he said. "We are now where we started."
* * * * *
And so we were, back in the Officers' Mess. A half hour ago our
troubles had begun here; now they threatened to end abruptly and, for
us, horribly.
But the half-breed's eyes had narrowed. A liar and dastard himself, he
had a liar's distrust for everyone else. He nodded toward the closed
door on the farther wall.
"We haven't been in there. Where does that lead?"
I said caustically, "No, and there's one mouse-trap you haven't crawled
into yet, too. What's the matter? Got a tapeworm? That's just the
kitchen."
It sounds right daring now that I see it in writing, but it was pure
braggadocio. I figured my number was up, and a few healthy insults
wouldn't make me die any deader. But our captor paid no attention.
Prodding Captain O'Hara before him, he pushed into the galley.
Of course Captain Slops was on duty. The little guy was a study in
technicolor; sort of pink around the eyebrows, white around the lips,
and green around the gills. But I had to hand it to him, he was a
game little fighting cock. Never a cringe for the Jovian commander,
who brushed by him to peer about the cookhouse, and though the runt
warriors had taken his massive old Haemholtz when they stripped us all,
I saw he had a very large, and a very sharp, cleaver hanging not too
far from his grasp.
Naturally, there wasn't anything for our foe to find in the galley. But
he went through all the motions, just the same. Squinted in the stove,
the refrigerator, the vegetable bins. And finally--
"Ah, ha!" rasped he. "What have we here? A cannon! So, Captain
O'Hara--a concealed weapon, eh? Sergeant--"
He wheeled to one of his subalterns. But Andy Laney stepped forward
awkwardly.
"It--er--it's not really a cannon, sir," he piped. "If you'll just
open the breech, sir, you'll see--Oh! _Do_ be careful, sir! Oh, my
goodness!"
Because Lieutenant-Colonel Ras Thuul had hurled open the breech, and
the incinerator-cannon was full--or had been a moment before. Now
it was half empty, and the accumulation of slops and refuse as yet
unincinerated had dumped backwards all over him!
It was the one bright spot in an otherwise dull day. Thuul howled and
bellowed, and that was a mistake because his mouth opened. Then he
spluttered. And gagged. And coughed. And backed, slipping and sliding
on cold gravy, away from the incinerator. He wasn't the impressive
figure he had been ten minutes ago. Coffee-grounds mottled his gold
tunic, and lima beans tangled coyly with his once-gleaming epaulets.
Potato-peelings draped gracefully from his ears, and the exotic odor of
a slightly antique egg exuded from his shirt-front.
Well, what would _you_ do? Even if you knew your life was in danger,
what would you do at such a moment?
The same as we did, of course. We laughed. The Old Man and I, we burst
out in a guffaw and rocked till we almost split our surcingles. And
Slops laughed, too, in that piping little squeal of his, though even
through his laughter he was gasping spasmodically, "I--I tried to warn
you, sir. I'm _so_ sorry! But you see it's only a garbage incinerator."
But he who laughs last, laughs last. And if our foe had been despicable
before, he was a raging fury now. He did not even stop to scrape the
last clinging turnip-top from his jacket. He spun to his subordinates
and screamed, "Come! We are finished here! Back to our ship! I'll show
these Earthmen one does not insult a Jovian commander with impunity!"
And his face a thundercloud of wrath, he dashed from the galley. We
heard him calling his men, heard them exiting through the airlock, and
then--silence again.
* * * * *
It was then, his paroxysms of mirth stifled by sober recollection, that
the Old Man turned and said, "Well, it was fun while it lasted. But
it's all over now, Dugan. Call the men together. This is the last act,
and we might as well all face it together."
But before I could leave the room, Slops clutched my arm with fingers
tense and hot as live wires.
"No, Joey! Don't go! I need your help. And yours, Skipper! Hurry! We
haven't a minute to lose!"
I stared at the Old Man and he at me. "H-huh?" said the two of us.
"Help? Help for what?"
"Oh, don't _talk_ so much!" bleated Andy. "_Work!_ Get this garbage out
of here--like this!"
And recklessly he plunged both arms into the channel of the
incinerator, recklessly hurled it about the previously immaculate floor
of the galley. As he worked, he panted: "An incinerator, yes ...
but ... it was a good cannon ... in its ... day. It will still work. I
cleaned ... and oiled it ... and connected it to the charger. _It still
shoots!_"
_Shoots!_ That was all we had to hear. We fell all over ourselves
trying to get an armload of that goo. I never thought I'd live to see
the day I'd go fond and blissful over a gallon of boiled noodles, but
that's just what happened. I dug in, and so did the skipper. In less
time than I've taken to tell it, we had that incinerator-cannon empty,
swabbed out and ready for use as a cannon-incinerator.
Then the captain clapped a hand to his forehead.
"Omigawd--I clean forgot! The firing-plate! There ain't no vision-field
for this gun!"
"Oh, yes there is!" cried Captain Slops. "Over your head, there--the
galley-vent. I--I removed the atmosphere-duct and installed a
vision-field. Use the crossed wires for a target centering device."
I flung open the vent. As he had said, the vent had been converted into
a perfect firing-plate. There before me, a fat and gladsome target, was
the largest of the enemy ships which had captured us, the flagship of
Ras Thuul's fleet. As I watched, I saw the commander and his boarding
party re-enter their own craft.
I said grimly, "Well, it's six against one. They'll blast us out of
space, but by the purple gods of Pluto, we'll take at least one of them
with us. This thing is connected?"
And I reached for the trigger. But once again Slops held my hand.
"No, Joey! There's a fighting chance we can get _all_ of them. Wait
till they cut the tractor beams and we're free of them. Then turn the
cannon _upward_ toward the Belt--"
"Upward?" I repeated dazedly. It didn't make sense. I glanced outside
to make sure. Here was the situation. The planetoid Vesta lay about a
mile or so below us. Larger than most of the meteoric and planetesimal
fragments that comprise the Belt, its orbit was irregular. The smaller
hunks of rock--and of course when you talk about "smaller" asteroids
that means shards ranging anywhere from a yard to several miles in
diameter, with weights ranging from a hundred pounds to twice that many
thousands of tons--were whirling and swirling _above_ our ships in a
tight, lethal little huddle. That, of course, was the _melee_ into
which Ras Thuul planned to plunge us after he cut his tractor beams.
* * * * *
Surprisingly, it was O'Hara who seconded Andy Laney.
"Do what he says, Joe. I don't know exactly what he has in mind, but
it's his pigeon. He's steered us right this far; we might as well go
whole-hog."
"Thank you, Captain!" said Slops gratefully. And as he spoke the words,
the _Leo_ rocked violently. With gathering speed we began to move away
from our erstwhile captors, their tractor beams now released. Upward
we surged toward the web-work of flailing missiles that spelled pure
destruction.
"Now, Joey!" almost screamed Slops. "Aim the cannon at the rubble. Hold
it firm. Full strength!"
And I did. I yanked the controls over to full power and aimed the heat
gun straight into the heart of the rubble. The radiation was invisible,
of course. Our enemies couldn't know we had an operative weapon. I held
it for seconds which dragged like centuries. Nearer we were hurtling
toward doom, nearer and nearer.
I cried, "Nothing's happening, Skipper! We're going to crash in a
minute. I might as well turn the gun on one of their ships--"
"_Hold it!_" shrieked Captain Slops. "It's working as I hoped. Hold it
steady, Joey!"
And now, returning my gaze to the target, I saw what he meant.
Something strange and weird was happening--not to us or to the enemy
spacecraft, but to the Bog itself! Like a huge, churning kettle it was
seething, rolling, boiling! And even as I cried aloud my astonishment,
one of the tinier bits of matter plummeted _down_ from the overhanging
canopy of death to rattle against the hull of Ras Thuul's flagship.
Then another ... and another ... and then a large piece. A hunk of rock
which must have weighed half a ton. It struck one of the Jovian vessels
like a sledgehammer, and a huge gap split in the spaceship's seams.
There came signs of frenzied activity from aboard the enemy boat; fire
spurted from stern-jets as engineers hurriedly warmed their rockets.
We saw two warships, desperately trying to get under way, ram each
other head on. Three more were crushed, beaten shapeless, by the
tons of stony metal that smashed their very girders. The last, Ras
Thuul's flagship, met its doom most horribly. It was caught as in a
vise between two mountainous boulders which rolled tangentially over
it. When they separated, all that remained of a once proud ship was a
flattened, lacerated shred of tortured steel.
[Illustration: _In the unbelievable shambles, two of the cruisers
collided._]
It was then, and then only, that Slops said to me:
"That's all, Joey. You can turn it off now." There was something
akin to sadness in his voice. I understood. I didn't feel any too
good myself, watching those Jovians, foes though they were, die so
frightfully. "Captain O'Hara, if we can repair the damage done by the
marauders, we can now go on to Callisto and complete our mission.
I--What's the matter, Captain?"
Cap O'Hara was glaring at his little finger irately.
"Matter? Why, confound it, I cut myself on that tin can. Look at this!"
He thrust before our noses a pudgy paw, the pinky of which was leaking
very feebly. I chuckled. Not so Slops; he loosed one horrified gasp,
and--
"Blood!" he screamed. "Oh, gracious, I simply can't _stand_ the sight
of blood! _Oooooohh!_"
His face went suddenly white. And--just like that!--Captain Slops
fainted dead away!
The skipper said, "Well, I'll be damned!" Dazed, he knelt beside the
little fellow, fumbled at his jacket collar. "Ain't that the funniest
you ever saw, Dugan? Sees six ships scuttled without batting an
eye-lash, and passes out at seeing a pinprick! Aw, well, it's probably
shock more than anything else. I'll unloose his shirt, give him a
little air--"