"Yeah. I'd get it myself but someone's got to drive this rig."
"Don't mind." She stretched languorously and stood up, stretching high;
pulling in her stomach and arching her back with her arms stretched
high above her head. Scyth whistled inadvertently as her body went
taut against the wisps of dazzling white that crossed her breasts
and hips. She came along the cabin top, dropped into the cockpit,
and disappeared into the cabin. She came out a moment later with a
bottle which she opened and handed to Dusty. She took the wheel while
he poured. They toasted one another. They sat side by side, their
shoulders touching.
"Nice," she said quietly.
"You bet."
"Nice, quiet and peaceful."
Dusty addressed his glass and held it high. "Here's to the G. D. Space
Patrol."
"What are you supposed to be doing?"
Dusty laughed. "I don't know. I'll find out when we get back. Gramer
will have some flanged-up explanation right and ready for me."
"You'd better hope that the G. D. Space Patrol doesn't catch you all at
sea with me."
"Phooey," he said. He pursed his lips and Barbara gave him a gentle
peck that made Scyth's blood bubble slightly.
"Phooey nothing," she said. "You'd be--er--cashiered. Imagine a member
of The Space Patrol consorting with a woman."
"What's good enough for pappy is good enough for me."
Barbara chuckled knowingly. "Where are we heading, if it's of any
importance?"
"There's an island dead ahead. We might camp on the beach for the
night. It's fine clean sand and--"
"You mean that hummock over there?"
"Hummock--humm--Good Lord!"
* * * * *
The hummock, dome of Scyth's spacecraft, began to rise out of the
sea. Yard after yard it rose, coming upward glistening wet, the sea
water running down in rivulets along its sleek flank. Ponderously and
inexorably it rose with a steadiness of living rock. Yet it carried the
air of feather-lightness, of an untold monster of sheer power held in
easy leash. This was no rocket, straining against the formidable pull
of gravity; this was a thing above material forces, its engines idling,
its control in complete command. Without a second glimpse it was no
spacecraft of Earth.
Up out of the sea it rose until its hundred yards towered above them.
The spacelock was just above the waterline when the rising stopped
and the alien spacecraft stopped, rock-steady. It was poised on its
inexplicable driving forces with the same confident ease that an
elevator shows when poised on its cables at the twentieth floor of a
building. It stood rock-still and let the ocean waves break against its
sleek, polished metal flank.
Whatever it was, Dusty did not like it.
He kicked the auxiliary engine into life, loosed the halyards and let
the sails drop. He turned the helm hard as the engine roared into full
throat. But the schooner defied its helm and aimed bowsprit-on to the
spacelock of the spacecraft, starting through the sea like a dolphin
toward the ship of space. The engine raced without bite because the
ship was being hauled forward by some unknown force faster than the
screw could drive it; the helm shuddered but had no effect, it tried
to slue the stern sidewise but only succeeded in making the hull
strain out of line. The wheel whipped out of Dusty's hand and spun to
dead-ahead.
Dusty left the helm and dived into the cabin. He flipped on his radio
and waited with rising panic while the tubes warmed and the meter
rose to the red line that meant that it was ripe and ready for use.
He grabbed the microphone, flipped the bandswitch to the Coast Guard
Frequency, and yelled:
"This is Dusty Britton of the schooner Buccaneer. We are about a
hundred miles off the coast of Baja California. Help! We are attacked
by an alien spacecraft! Help! This is--"
He let his voice trail off because the output meter dropped abruptly to
zero. Something had gone kaput.