Then abruptly the pip that marked the black ship on the radar screen disappeared. It had been shrinking to a point, but this was different. It was as if someone had drawn a curtain across space, cutting off the ship from them.
Another miracle! Now the ship could neutralize the radar beam. That meant it either had to absorb the beam or become completely transparent to it—and one was as impossible as the other.
“Delayed reaction from the proton blasts,” Anderson said doubtfully. “Maybe he blew up.”
Commander Griffith shook his head. For the first time Bob could remember, his father looked completely unsure of himself. “No—you know that couldn’t explain it. The fragments would show up on the radar just as strongly as the ship did. He just neutralized our beam.”
He sat staring at the controls and the screen, obviously hating to give up, and yet with nothing to do.
They couldn’t locate the ship; if they did, they couldn’t catch up with it. Even if they were right beside it, their best weapons were harmless, while it could play games with them by sending harmless little jolts to tell them to go away and stop being bothersome.
Finally Griffith sighed heavily, and shook himself. “I guess we write ourselves off as failures,”
he summed it up. “Plot me a course back to the rest of Wing Nine, Hoeck. We’d better stop chasing hobgoblins and get back to our mission.”
There was nothing else to do, Bob realized, but it didn’t end bis disappointment. He’d grown up with the idea that any Navy ship was a match for any number of pirates and one of the favorite games at the Academy had been based on elaborate movements of pieces on a board where all were pirates except one Navy cruiser. Now, in his first encounter, he was going down heavily in defeat—hopelessly outclassed by a single pirate ship.
It wouldn’t make a pretty story to tell! And it wasn’t good to think about Hoeck was just looking up from his calculations when a signal buzzed from the intercom.
The Commander pressed down one of the buttons automatically. “Control.”
“Sparks,” the voice said quickly. “Commander, I’ve just got another message from the Ionian!”
“The what?”
“The Ionian, sir. It was full of static, but someone was yelling for help and complaining about being stranded by pirates without air. He didn’t know the standard code at all, sir, and his power was fading pretty fast.” Sparks was obviously doubtful about it himself. “I tried to call back, but I got no answer.”
“Could anyone still be on board?” Griffith asked Anderson.
The Leftenant nodded slowly. “I suppose so. It would take days to examine every hiding place there; we just looked in every logical place. But how would he send out a voice message without air?”
“Snap open his helmet, toss in the mike, and close it again. If he held his breath, the suit would fill almost at once, and he’d be unhurt,” Bob answered, and again he was borrowing from some of the adventure fiction he had read. “There’d be some leak near the wires, but he could send a message, pull out the mike, and close down tight again.”
Griffith nodded approvingly at Bob. “I did it myself once, just to test it. The same story you read, Bob, I’ll bet. Sparks, keep sending out assurances—in case his receiver has a light—to tell him we’re answering. Hoeck, you’d better give me another course.”
“Already done,” the navigator said. He passed it over.
This time deceleration was held to six gravities pressure, but it lasted longer. The hulk of the Ionian had been drifting along at a constant speed, while the Lance had built up to a much higher speed and then drifted on at that greater rate. The distance between the two ships was considerable.
But matching course and speed was routine, now that pirates didn’t have to be considered.
They snapped out of high drive almost beside the derelict ship, and with only a slight tendency to drift apart. Commander Griffith corrected this with a few quick blasts of the little steering rockets. Through the viewport Bob could just see some of the crew getting the rubbery tube ready to connect the two ships again.
He looked inquiringly at his father as Anderson got ready to go across, and the Commander nodded. This time Anderson was buckling a heavy automatic pistol outside his suit. He gave one to Bob. “We don’t take chances. If there’s anything funny, shoot first and then get back to the Lance; we have to figure it might be a trap.”
“I’ll cover you from here,” Griffith added. His eyes were worried as he looked at Bob, but he made no move to hold the boy back. In the Navy, voluntary risk was expected.
They went cautiously across and through the open port of the air lock. Inside, everything was just as they had left it. Anderson inspected the way carefully, but he seemed satisfied. They turned toward the radio room. If the person making the call had any sense, he’d wait right there until help came.
Going cautiously through the deserted, lifeless passages of the ship began to give Bob a feeling that he’d had before only when he was a kid and had been hearing too many ghost stories. But he repressed it savagely. Then they were in front of the door that was marked with the zigzag symbol of electronics.
Anderson opened it cautiously. There was no air to carry sound, and the sponge-rubber soles of the space suits made no thud that could be carried through the floor. The small figure sitting at the radio desk never looked up.
The light on the panel was blinking in response to Sparks’s call, but it apparently had meant nothing. The figure sat slumped forward hopelessly, his helmet buried on his arms, which were resting on the desk. It wasn’t until Bob touched him on the shoulder that he stirred.
Then he sprang up as if stung, and swung on them. His eyes dropped to the Navy insignia, and the alarm went out of his face, to be replaced by a sudden wash of relief. He would have fallen if Anderson hadn’t caught him.
Bob was shocked himself. He’d expected to find a man but this was only a boy of about his own age. Even through the suit he was short and slim, with a dark skin, black eyes and hair, and almost too handsome a face.
By touching helmets together they could talk, though not very distinctly. The boy obviously had no radio inside his suit, but Anderson bent down and Bob did the same.
The boy was babbling his thanks, but Anderson cut him off. “Are there any more here?”
“No.” The boy sounded as if something very unpleasant lay buried in the single word. “No, sir. Only me. Only Juan Roman, son of Bartolomeo Roman, who was captain of the Ionian, and now…”
He shuddered, and Anderson nodded sympathetically. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened to his father. Anderson motioned for him to follow and, no longer suspecting a trap, they went back toward the air lock at a faster gait.
The boy looked genuine enough, aside from his obvious condition when they had found him.
Io had been settled exclusively by Spanish Americans, and Spanish was the official language there, though most of the people also spoke English. Juan’s English contained the faint trace of an accent, and his appearance fitted his obvious ancestry.
Griffith was waiting for them when they came back, standing at the door of the control room.
He had tea and wafers waiting for Juan. For a second he seemed surprised at the boy’s age, but he covered it quickly, while they introduced themselves.
Then the ship got under way again, heading on the automatic pilot for the rest of Wing Nine.
Juan gasped at the pressure of acceleration, but he apparently could stand it. They were not on high drive; probably Griffith had ordered Wing Nine to hold up for his arrival, cutting down acceleration.
“I’ll have to ask you several questions,” Commander Griffith began. “I know this is no time to bother you, Juan, but I have to get some information.”
“I shall gladly give all I can,” Juan assured him. “I, too, do not like black ships which come to kill my father.”
Although Griffith nodded and smiled, his next question whipped out sharply. “Where did you get your suit, Juan?”
Bob had forgotten that there had been sixty suits in the lockers and only sixty listed on the manifest.
But Juan shrugged. “It was made for me special, because I am too small for a regular suit. When my father let me come on this, my first trip, we ordered it in advance.”
