The two of them stepped away from the cave and stood in full view as the
snapper-boat moved cautiously down toward the asteroid. Rip planned what
he would say. "Commander O'Brine, this is Foster!"
No, that wouldn't do. Connies would know that Kevin O'Brine commanded the
_Scorpius_, and if they had taken over the Planeteers on the asteroid,
they would also have learned Rip's name. He had to say something that
would immediately identify him beyond the shadow of a doubt.
The snapper-boat was closing in slowly. Rip knew the pilot and gunner
must be tense, frightened, ready to blast with their guns at the first
wrong move on the asteroid. He groped with his good arm and turned up his
helmet communicator to full volume.
The fighting rocket drew closer, cut in its nose tube, and hovered only a
few hundred feet above the Planeteers.
Rip summoned enough strength to make his voice sharp and clear. His words
sped through space into the bubble of the pilot, echoed in the helmet,
were picked up by the pilot's microphone, and then were hurled through
the snapper-boat circuit and through space to the cruiser's control room.
O'Brine stiffened as the speaker threw Rip's voice at him, amplified and
hollow-sounding from reverberations in the snapper-boat pilot's helmet.
"_O'Brine is so ugly he won't look at his face in a clean blast tube!
That no-good Irishman wouldn't know what to do with an asteroid if he had
one!_"