Rocket from Infinity (9 page)

“Storage,” Pete said. “All those boxes. They must contain food and supplies for the trip.”

“But none of them have been used. This hold is jammed full.”

“Maybe there are other supply holds.”

There were. Hold after hold reaching back to the stern of the ship—six in all—three filled to capacity and three completely empty.

The farther they went from the cybernetic brain up front, the brighter Jane's mood became. When they reached the tail, her eyes were bright and her face glowed.

“Pete! We're rich! Do you realize that? This ship is priceless! And it's all ours—for salvage.”

“I hope so.”

“What do you mean? It
is
ours.”

“We haven't filed our salvage plan yet. Maybe—”

He stopped as he caught the expression on Jane's face. She was staring out through the hull plate. She pointed. “A monocar!”

“Homer Deeds!” Pete said automatically.

“No. It's Mother and the girls!”

“That's ridiculous!” Pete snapped. “You're seeing things!”

He searched the wall of the pocket outside as Jane snapped the switch on her head piece radio unit.

“Mother! What are you doing out there? Why aren't you home in the
Snapdragon
?”

Then Pete saw them—jammed together in the crippled car he'd towed home after rescuing Jane. He snapped on his own unit and heard Rachel Barry's cheerful voice.

“We were worried about you. So we got a fix and came hunting. Are you all right, dear?”

“How did you get here in that car without killing yourself?” Pete demanded.

“Oh, it works all right. You just have to keep righting it and pulling it back on course.”

“It goes end-over-end all the time,” Colleen wailed.

“What are you doing in that funny-looking ship?” Ellen asked.

The car came looping out into the open area. Jane brought a quick hand to her mouth. “Mother! Go back! Go back in among the rocks and wait there. This ship will smash you to pieces!”

“The ship will smash us? What kind of nonsense are you talking, dear? Open the hatch and let us in.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PIRATES!

The next fifteen minutes was frantic. First, Pete and Jane watched in horror as Rachel Barry urged the balky monocar out into the area the space ship was keeping clear.

“Mother! Go back! Go back!” Jane screamed.

Rachel Barry was puzzled. “What's wrong with you, child? Why shouldn't we come aboard?”

“The ship will slug you!” Pete yelled.

“Why, I never heard of such nonsense!”

“Go back!”

It was too late even if the stubborn mother of the Barry brood had chosen to listen. The spaceship had already taken aim with its tail and was swinging murderously.

As they watched through the windows and saw the outer world streak by, Jane and Pete looked at each other in consternation. But they had no time to comment on what had astounded them, because Rachel's voice came in a moment later.

“This pesky car! It does what it pleases.”

“They weren't hit!” Jane marveled.

Another moment and the monocar came back into view and Pete realized what had happened. “The car did a back flip over the ship and went back where it came from! The ship missed it!”

“Mother! Stay where you are!” Jane shouted. We'll come out and get you.”

“Well, all right. I can't seem to get the grapples down on the hull.”

“I'll go,” Pete said. “I've got a hand jet in my car.”

“Pete's coming to guide you in,” Jane said.

Pete hurried away and a few minutes later, Jane saw him through the transparent plate, pushing his way toward the crippled car. Once there, he grasped the landing grid bar in one hand, pointed the activated hand jet rearward, and pulled the car slowly along the wall of the cluster toward the fused prow of the ship.

As he moved beyond range of her vision, Jane went to the companionway and ran back to the air lock, where she was waiting when her family entered.

Colleen's eyes were round with wonder. “This is going to be fun!” she announced.

The elder of the two Barrys, Ellen, was somewhat more reserved. “When we walked along the hull it was like wading in rock dust,” she said.

“Yes,” Rachel agreed. “What sort of a ship is this, Jane?”

“We don't know, Mother, but it's a salvage price that will make us all rich—that's for sure.”

“How did you ever find it, child?”

Jane looked suddenly tired, and Pete knew the incident with Homer Deeds and his two friends had come to mind; that and the realization that she would have to tell her mother the truth about the man they had treated as one of the family.

“It's a long story, Mother. Right now Pete and I have to figure out how to get this ship to Parma to claim salvage.”

“Where is the crew? What happened?”

“We'll find that out later. Why don't you and the girls—”

A sudden, unheralded shriek from Colleen split the air, causing Pete to jump almost out of his skin. “What's the matter?” Jane cried.

“Omaha! We forgot Omaha. He's still in the car.”

“Then it's too late,” Pete said. “The bubble is open.”

“That doesn't make any difference. We put his space suit on when we got here.”

Pete stared. “A space suit for a cat?”

“Of course,” Colleen said. “Cats have to breathe too, don't they?”

“I'll go get him,” Pete said.

A space suit for a cat! Still not believing it, Pete went outside again and back to the asteroid where the two cars were grappled down. He peered into the one the Barrys had miraculously escaped death in and, sure enough, from a narrow space behind the seat, a pair of hostile eyes blazed out at him.

“Come on, you stupid feline,” Pete invited.

Omaha declined. Pete looked closer and saw that the cat actually was wearing a specially built space unit! It consisted of a blanket through which Omaha's ears, legs, and tail protruded. The cat's eyes blazed out balefully at Pete over a headpiece that covered its nose.

“Come on, I said. Do you want to sit there and freeze to death?”

This seemed to make sense to Omaha. He lifted his flattened ears and deigned to jump up on the seat. Pete lifted him out of the car and, as he crossed the fused area, he found that there were tiny magnets attached to the cat's feet.

So when Omaha began to squirm, Pete set him down on the hull and pointed rearward. “Your family is back there,” he muttered.

Then Pete was treated to one of the most hilarious spectacles he'd ever seen. The moment Omaha's feet touched the hull plate, he began to flounder. Pete realized instantly what was happening. The cat was also a victim of the sinking-in sensation. He looked up at Pete in consternation, and when he found no help in that direction, he began wallowing and floundering along the smooth surface of the hull.

Pete grinned. “It's like he was drunk,” he chuckled.

Omaha finally achieved a kind of balance and began walking rearward, lifting his feet high in the air at each step as he marched along. A couple of times he looked back at Pete disdainfully as though he had personally arranged this ridiculous situation.

But the comedy episode ended swiftly when, from somewhere in the surrounding cluster, Pete heard a rifle crack. The sound was transmitted through the near-vacuum from a radio near its source, and Pete picked up the crack and then the
spat
of lead against the hull on his receiver.

Reacting instantly, he snatched up the cat and ran. His progress was slow and clumsy and, when a second slug was fired, he began to zigzag.

Three more shots were fired, proving beyond doubt the murderous intent behind them. But luck, lack of skill on the part of the rifleman, or Pete's zigzagging retreat, saved him from death or injury.

Safe inside the outer chamber, Pete leaned his weight against the seal. It opened with maddening slowness, and he leaped inside. There, he waited while the chamber filled, each second dragging by like an age.

When the inner seal released, Pete heard Jane speaking to her mother: “We don't dare radio for help. It would guide them straight to us.”

Obviously, Jane had told her the truth about Homer Deeds and what had happened on the planetoid. But, with exasperating loyalty, Rachel Barry was still defending Homer: “It's impossible! Homer may be weak and maybe a little sharp in his dealings, but he isn't a murderer!”

“Well, if he isn't,” Pete snapped, “he's got two killers with him, and they've tracked us here. I dodged four slugs on the way back.”

“I'll talk to Homer.”

“You do that,” Pete said grimly. “In the meantime, I'm going topside and try to locate them.”

As Pete headed toward the long companionway, he noted that the two younger girls had disappeared, that Rachel Barry had been rooted to the floor by the developments Jane had passed on to her, and that Omaha was yowling for somebody to take his suit off and relieve him of his magnets so he could walk around.

Great, Pete thought grimly. A war with salvage pirates and a family on my hands!

Jane was close behind him as he entered the first empty storage hold, the best place they'd found for outside observation.

“Are you hoping what I'm hoping?” Jane asked.

“I wouldn't be surprised. Can you spot them?”

Jane went to the center of the hold and looked straight up. “I don't see anything but rocks.” She began moving, her window automatically following along overhead.

“I think they're somewhere on this side,” Pete said as he walked along the bulkhead. “The shots angled in.”

Jane joined him and had moved some few feet ahead when she pointed. “There they are! There's a ship in that pocket.”

Pete stepped behind her and looked over her shoulder. “Sure! I can see the nose in the shadows. They're a little timid about coming out.”

“They know we're in here. Maybe they're afraid we're not alone.”

“They're too smart for that. They've sized this tub up as a derelict. But they could figure that we've found some guns.”

“I'd think they'd move in fast. They must know we'll call for help. You'd better contact your father.”

“Not a chance.”

“What do you mean? You don't have to go back to the car. Your mobile unit will—”

“Do you think they haven't got a scrambler on us? Snap on your unit and see what happens.”

Jane complied, and her face twisted as from a blow. In a sense it was a blow—an angry, snarling shaft of sound that knifed into her ears. It obviously came from a portable scrambler aboard the pirate's scout-car. Jane cut the howling racket out.

“It's against the law to scramble!” she cried.

“It's against the law to shoot people, too, but those boys are playing for keeps.”

“Why can't the authorities make a fix on the sound of a scrambler?”

“This is no time for a lesson in radiotronics. Just accept my word that they can't.”

Jane was shaping a reply when Pete touched her arm. “They're coming out!”

Jane's eyes brightened. She smiled. “Goody!”

“We'll see what happens.”

They watched as the scout nosed out of its cave. Jane's fingernails dug into Pete's arm as the nose pointed toward the ship and the jet power was advanced.

“It's coming straight in,” she breathed.

“I thought maybe they'd wonder why our ships are grappled to the asteroid, but I guess they weren't that smart.”

The hit was perfect. They were close enough to see the looks of amazement and fear of the three faces as the hull of the derelict came around and smashed the scout squarely on the nose. The bubble collapsed and the scoutcar went hurtling backward to smash in turn against the wall of an asteroid and drop down to a shelf wide enough to hold it.

“That finishes them,” Jane murmured. She had buried her face in Pete's shoulder, and he knew she was thinking of Homer Deeds. She realized he deserved his fate, but she still couldn't contemplate it without tears.

“Like Mother said, he was weak.”

“Don't be too sure they're finished,” Pete warned. “There's heavy shielding in the back of a scoutcar and the bubble didn't smash into them.”

Even as he spoke, there was movement in the smashed car and two figures emerged. A third one could be seen lying motionless in the car.

“His two friends made it. They're moving around. They don't seem to be too badly hurt.”

“But they're probably plenty scared. Maybe they'll take one of the monocars and leave.”

“Don't bet on it,” Pete said. “They'll be slowed down for a few minutes, though, and we'd better use the time in hunting for something to defend ourselves with.”

“Even if we do find weapons, we may not know how to use them.”

“We can always try,” Pete said. He peered around the huge empty hold. “If my sense of proportions are right, we haven't covered half of this ship yet. It has odd construction. There doesn't seem to be any entrance to the lower section.”

“There has to be. And we've got to find it. If we don't find some way to protect ourselves, they'll steal our salvage.”

“That's not the worst. They were ready to kill me when they met me, but they wouldn't have killed you Barrys as long as Homer Deeds was with them. If he's dead and with a prize like this at stake, I don't think they'd hesitate to kill all of us.”

“Do you think they really tried to kill you? Maybe they were only trying to scare—”

“Stop dreaming! This is for real. Those men would kill their own mothers for the money tied up in this derelict.”

Pete stopped and suddenly snapped his fingers. “I've got to go back to the cars!”

“What for?”

“The water supply. The vapor tanks in this ship have to be bone-dry after hundreds of years. Maybe the food is still edible but we've got to have water to hold out any length of time.”

“Pete! They'll be watching!”

“If I go now, while they're still groggy, I can probably make it. I'll go around the far side and they won't see me, even if they're looking, until I reach the cars.”

“There might be water aboard.”

“A million-to-one shot, and we can't use up the time in hunting.”

He started aft and Jane ran to catch up with him.

Her hand stayed on his arm. “Pete, if anything happens to you…”

“Nothing will. Let's hurry. There's something I want to show you before I go out.”

When they got to the top of the stairway that led into the air lock readyroom, Pete seized a hook and pulled it, and a heavy panel came out of the wall.

“I noticed this earlier. It's a door you can pull across the head of the stairs to block off the companionway. When I come back, I'll knock on the outer seal three times. If anyone comes in without knocking, see that everyone's out of the ready-room and close this door. It locks automatically right there. It will hold them off at least for a while.”

“Pete—be careful.”

“Oh, I'll be back all right. It's just that in a situation like this, we have to prepare for every possibility.”

Pete went into the air lock, and the door closed behind them. Outside, he crouched and listened. He heard only the eternal grinding of the rocks in the ever-restless clusters, impressive even though muted because of the lack of atmosphere to carry the sound.

Rising, he moved down the hull to the blind side.

And met one of the two active pirates on an exploratory mission!

But the meeting was not face to face, a break for which Pete was instantly thankful. The man, the larger of the two, stood tight to the hull with his back to Pete. He seemed to be debating which way to go.