“There's the Bay port, just ahead,” Andy Groggins said. He had run ahead of Badger and the rest of the party. He had a slug-thrower with telescopic wire stuck under his arm. Strapped to his waist was a Geiss needle. He'd tied a bit of cloth around his forehead to keep sweat out of his eyes.
“We'll just ease our way in it,” Red Badger said. His synthide shirt was torn, revealing his hairy freckled chest and prominent paunch. His small eyes gleamed as he pressed forward. He had a Krag beamer under his arm, its selector pointing to rapid intermittent.
The corridor widened at this point. There were separate passageways leading to “stores” in one direction and to “power” in the other.
As they came out into the wide opened area between corridors, a voice called out, “Freeze, you!”
Badger stood motionless. The others, coming along behind him, managed to slink into the shadows. But Red Badger felt very exposed. He didn't let his apprehension show, however.
He took two casual steps forward and said, “It's all right, the captain sent us.”
“He didn't tell me nothin' about that,” the voice said.
Badger had it located now. It was coming from a paint locker on the far side of the corridor. The guard who was stationed here must have taken refuge when the trouble began elsewhere in the ship. But where was his partner?
“I don't blame you for being cautious,” Badger said. “But I'm telling you it's all right. We're here to relieve you.”
As he talked he peered ahead, trying to figure out how long it would take him to blast through the paint locker and kill the man inside. Too long, he decided. The guard could get him in a single well-placed burst first.
“Stop right there and drop your weapons,” the guard called out.
“You're making a mistake,” Badger said, and kept on coming. “Captain Hoban told us to secure this area as quickly as possible. Damn it, man, this is serious!”
“Stop right now, or —“
At that moment there was a double burst of slugthrower fire as Glint and Connie opened up almost simultaneously from opposite sides of the corridor. They held down their fire while the paint locker rattled up and down and bounced against the corridor wall, finally letting up only after blowing the door off the hinges and seeing the single guard inside fall out onto the deck.
“Let's go,” Badger said, leading the way to the pod. “We're getting out of here.”
54
“It's Badger and his men,” one of the engineers remarked, reading the terse information that flowed to the TV screen from all parts of the ship. “He's killed the guard.”
“Damn it!” Captain Hoban said. “Can you see what they're doing now?”
“They've just entered the pod.”
“Seal the ports!” Hoban ordered.
“Too late. They've already opened them.”
“Close them again!”
The engineer punched buttons then shook his head. “They've locked them into place. They're blasting off.”
Hoban watched on the screen as a schematic came up, showing the
“I can still pull them back with the short-range tractors,” the engineer said, his fingers poised on the controls.
Captain Hoban hesitated. At this range, he knew that the tractors would pull the pod apart. Badger and the others wouldn't stand a chance. He didn't want to go that far. There would be a court of inquiry over this. He needed to keep his record clean.
“Book their departure in the ship's log,” he ordered.
“I don't know that they'll make it,” the engineering officer said. “The weather's really bad out there.”
Hoban looked and saw that an entire weather front had moved in while they were dealing with Badger. Long ragged clouds covered the planet's surface, clouds that were whipped and torn apart by the wind's violent action. Lightning flashed, huge jagged blue-violet bolts, several miles long, lancing out of the black-bellied clouds into the naked land below. Although the
“Try Dr. Myakovsky again,” he ordered. “We have to warn him.”
“I'm trying, sir,” the officer said. “But no luck so far.”
55
“I'm getting something”, Gill reported.
“Thank God,” said Julie.
“Is it Hoban?” Stan asked.
“Yes, I think it is.”
Stan swung around in his big command chair and took the microphone from Gill's hand. “Hoban? What's going on there?”
“Sorry for the delay in transmission, sir,” Hoban said, his voice echoing eerily around the lander's cabin. “We've had a revolt on-board. It's in hand now, but a group of crewmen have seized a pod and are on their way to the surface.”
“Nothing much they can do to us,” Stan said. “Listen, Captain, something really important has happened here. We've lost Norbert.”
“Your robot alien? I'm sorry to hear it, sir, though I was never that fond of him.”
“At least he died doing what he was built to do,” Stan said.
“What about the dog?” Hoban asked.
“Yes, the dog's gone, too,” Stan said brusquely. “Why is everyone so upset about the dog? The dog's not important. We've got troubles of our own.”
There was no reaction to that. Stan cleared his throat and wondered how soon he could take another ampoule. Then he brought his attention back to present matters.
“Captain Hoban, we've found what we were looking for. The beekeepers have done our job for us. Norbert took over a Bio-Pharm harvester ship. It's packed full of royal jelly. We're rich, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. If we can just get out of here now. Can you get up to our orbit?”
“Negative,” Stan said. “We're still in the lander, which is barely maneuverable in this weather. Taking shelter in the harvester is our best bet, but it's going to take some doing to get there.”
“Yes, sir,” Hoban said. “I copy.”
“Secondly, preliminary visual inspection shows the flight controls of the harvester were badly damaged in the fighting. I doubt it'll fly, but it'll provide more refuge than the lander. You'll have to come down to us.”
“Yes, sir,” Hoban said, without enthusiasm. “What about the volunteers?”
“We've lost touch with them,” Stan answered. “As soon as we get ourselves out of here, they'll be our first order of business.”
Hoban didn't like it, but it didn't seem the time or place to voice a disagreement.
“It ought to be simple enough,” Stan said. “What you need to do, as soon as the weather stabilizes a little, is send the backup lander down here to pick us up. Our situation here is none too stable.”
“We can't send the backup lander,” Hoban said. “I told you, sir, Badger and his men took it. Can you maneuver at all in your lander, Dr. Myakovsky?”
