Drusilla looked up. Her face blanched even under the Deepurple she had
sprayed on. "Jak!" she squeaked.
Jak hung his helmet on the rack, swept some of the broken tubes and
severed wires from the control board, placed them in a jagged ball
in midair, and savagely canceled the flight plan. He activated the
calculator. In a voice like nothing he had heard issue from his own
throat, he said, "Your Captain Flim didn't know any more about a
pistol than the average citizen. At sea level on Earth, the 6 mm Morgia
bullet has a muzzle velocity of 1253 meters per second; and, at a range
of, say, 300 meters, the bullet rises 10.5 centimeters above the line
of sight at the top of the curve it traces. Out here, with no gravity
or air pressure, the bullet travels in a perfectly straight line. I
ran Flim's sight all the way up, and when he tried to hit my head as I
asked him, he missed me a mile--whatever that means. On Earth, he would
have hit regardless of the sights. He had only one shot, because the
cold of the dark side contracted the slide; and the recoil, terrific
without gravity, sent him and his crew flying."
Jak left the clicking calculator and stared at the motionless Drusilla.
"Don't worry about your sweetjet," he rasped. "He'll drift back to
his copter. We're changing course for the Patrol station on Callisto
to report and have them picked up. I hope the centrifugal force and
deceleration is enough to smear you!"
"But, Jak," Drusilla moaned, "you know--"
"Don't start that again!" Jak roared. "You told me a--a dis-truth!
What an act! You ought to be in tridies. At two months, Lar BW16177 on
Hungaria looked like--You wanted to go to Earth because of that prize
in the Photographic Salon! You wanted to taste your fame. What are you
trying to do, ruin me? You don't need the Wollongong Obstetric Hospital
any more than I do! I'm going back to the Rings, and you can sit on
Callisto till you--yes, till you death yourself!"
"Jak," Drusilla murmured. "I never knew you could be so domineering,
so," she giggled the naughty word, "masculine."
"Silence!" Jak bellowed. He darted down the passage to quarters and
spurted back carrying a gray uniform soaked with tomato juice. He
snarled, "I told you to clean this! Now do it!"
The silver crescent and rocket emblem of the Space Patrol still
glittered through the stain. Beneath that crest appeared Jak's serial
number, SP34509260.