Evans frowned. "That would make him desperate, all right. The Commander
has an idea that he might even attack our rocket to get you, Seaworth."
"You mean that he'd even try to take an Earth-Guard rocket?"
"Yes, but it's just an idea. We'll keep a mighty sharp lookout for him,
and whatever else the Hawk may have done, I think he's too wary a bird
to try tackling Earth-Guard rockets."
They were interrupted by a thunderous blast of firing-tubes as a
battered cargo ship of the tramp class, a quarter of its tubes out
of commission, hurtled upward from the great ascension-framework. At
once the huge machinery beside it that held the Earth-Guard rocket was
sliding it smoothly into the ascension-framework to go out also. The
warning-bell was jangling again and Calden and Hartley came up to the
two men.
"All ready," Calden reported, saluting. "The starter's given us
9.40--that's eight minutes from now."
Evans nodded. "Time to go, Seaworth," and they strode toward the
stern-door of the big, upreared craft.
"I see you've still got my little ship tacked on," Seaworth commented
as they moved across the station.
"Yes, refueled and ready for you whenever we're near enough the moon
for you to leave safely."
They passed inside and the stern-door closed and whirred as Hartley
spun it carefully shut. Climbing the light metal ladders inside the
upreared craft the four men gained the pilot-house, where Calden
took his accustomed seat at the controls. Strapped into their
shock-absorbing seats, the four men looked down over the station and
its swarming throngs, a busy scene in the morning sunlight.
Just beside the ascension-framework rose the starter's tower, from
which, at intervals, the streams of ships were allowed to start out
into the various space-lanes. Lights were flashing and changing color
on it each moment as the minute for the departure of the Earth-Guard
ship drew near. Already the machinery beside the ascension-framework
was ready to move into it the next rocket to start, a great
passenger-craft into which hundreds of passengers were hastening,
crowds of friends waving them bon voyage. Few in the station were
paying any attention to the routine departure of the Earth-Guard's
craft.
The lights on the starter's tower had flashed from yellow to green, and
then to red. Calden was watching them imperturbably, his hands resting
on the main firing-levers, while Evans, as always at the moment of
starting, involuntarily drew a deep preparatory breath. Then the lights
flashed suddenly pure white, Calden's hands depressed the levers with a
single motion, and, as a thunderous blast of sound broke from the great
rocket's stern beneath them, they were pressed with immeasurable force
into their seats.
* * * * *
The sunlit station had vanished in a flash from around them, and
there was a dizzy lurching and trembling of the great mass as it shot
upward and outward. From outside came a steady roar of air against the
rocket's walls that was audible even above the thunder of continued
explosions from the rear; and the air grew suddenly warm about them.
Then the roar of air had ceased, the walls of the pilot-house were
cooling, and the diffused bright sunlight of the atmosphere was gone.
For in the immensity of space the sun flared fiercely on one side,
while a rayless gloom, gemmed with steady-burning stars, stretched away
on the other.
Ahead, the moon's brilliant disk, almost completely illumined by the
sun, gleamed calm and white amid the throbbing fires of the encircling
stars. Evans and Seaworth contemplated its beauty with a silent wonder
that not even long familiarity with the sight could dull. Calden,
meantime, was calmly checking over dials and controls, while Hartley
had already gone below to sleep against the next watch at the controls.
This vital station was filled by the craft's three officers in
successive watches of four hours each.
In the hours that followed, Evans felt slipping away from him the
hope that he had cherished of meeting the Hawk in straight battle in
mid-space. Since Commander Cain's warning to him, he had persuaded
himself that because of Seaworth's presence the Hawk might really
attack. Like all others in the Earth-Guard, Evans desired nothing more
ardently than a final battle with the elusive and dreaded corsair.
But though the lookouts at every one of the great rocket's
observation-cells kept an unceasing watch through the void, no sign of
the black rocket was to be seen. The Earth-Guard ship might have been
alone in space, had it not twice caught sight of great cargo-rockets
plowing their way moonward in the slower space-lanes, and once passed
an earth-bound Earth-Guard craft closely enough in a neighboring lane
to exchange with it a flashing "Salute" signal in passing.
When Evans ascended to the pilot-house for his third watch at the
controls, thirty-two hours after their start from earth, the moon's
gleaming sphere was huge in the heavens before them.
"A dozen hours more and we'll be there," he commented disappointedly
to Hartley and Seaworth, as he relieved the former at the controls. "I
guess there's no chance of your wreaking your wrath on the Hawk this
trip, Hartley."
"I told you it was crazy to think he'd tackle us," Hartley rejoined,
"though I admit I've been hoping he would."
"Well, I haven't," Seaworth told them, grinning. "It may be just play
to you lads in the Earth-Guard, but the Hawk nearly settled me twice
and I hate to think what he'd do if he got me now."
"No danger," Evans told him as Seaworth followed the yawning Hartley
down out of the pilot-house. "We'll have you safe and sound on the moon
in a half day more, and if you can nab the Hawk there, it'll punish him
for not showing up this trip."
* * * * *
Left alone in the pilot-house, Evans sat at the control-board with eyes
glancing from one to another of the recording dials above it. Now and
then he depressed a firing-lever, firing one of the rocket's side tubes
to keep it from leaving its proper space-lane, but for the most part
the great craft hurtled steadily onward in its course, and he occupied
himself in contemplating through the windows the moon's bright sphere
and the dazzling light-patches on it that marked the position of the
lunar cities.
Evans had been sitting thus in solitude at the controls for some
minutes before he heard a strange popping sound from somewhere in the
rocket's interior beneath him. He listened sharply, and heard other
quick-following popping sounds, as of slight detonations; then came a
babel of cries from beneath, cries that were cut sharply short! Evans
sprang to his feet. There was silence below now, but suddenly the door
of the pilot-house was flung open and Seaworth burst up into it, his
face livid.
"The Hawk!" he gasped. And then, his eyes suddenly widening, he pointed
out through the windows beyond Evans. "Look there!" he cried.
Evans whirled toward the window. In the next instant he seemed to see a
curtain of flame descending before his eyes as something struck him a
crashing blow on the head. The flame-curtain was succeeded instantly by
the black depths of unconsciousness.
It was only slowly that he came back to himself. He became aware that
he was sitting against the wall, that the thunder of the rocket's
firing-tubes was coming to his ears, that his brain ached. He tried to
move, but found that his hands were tightly tied, his feet were bound,
and every movement made his head throb. He opened his eyes, then stared
uncomprehendingly, as if stupefied.
He was sitting against the pilot-house wall, and a half-dozen feet from
him, at the control-board, sat Seaworth. He was calmly manipulating the
firing-levers, and he looked up and smiled as he saw Evans' astounded
gaze upon him.
"It really was the Hawk after all, you see," he said. "Only instead
of being outside the rocket he was inside!" He laughed with genuine
amusement.