“What other one?” Greg said.
“Your brother. Where is he?”
“How would I know?”
The man’s face darkened. “You’d be smart to watch your tongue,” he said. “We know there were three of you, we want the other one.”
“I told you I don’t know where he is,” Greg said.
The man turned to a guard. “What about it?”
“Don’t know, Doc. Nobody’s reported him.”
“Then take a crew and search the ship. We were due back hours ago. He’s in there somewhere.”
“Sure, Doc.” The guard disappeared through the lock. The man called Doc motioned Greg and Johnny through into the main cabin.
The Ranger was large and luxurious, with modern instru- merits, a large colloid computer, and a view screen that picked up 210 degrees in a single panel. The screen was on. Greg could see the silvery curve of the orbit ship alongside, with a gaping hole torn through into the main storage hold. Below, the bright side of the asteroid was visible. He could see the pockmarked hull of the Scavenger clinging to its rack just below them.
“What are you planning to do with us?” he demanded.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Doc’s mouth twisted angrily. “You’re important people, didn’t you know that? Kid gloves they told us to use. So now I’ve got nine stun-shocked men, and you haven’t even been scratched.” He threw his suit in the comer. “You ever been stun-shocked?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s lots of fun. Maybe when Tawney gets through with you we’ll have a chance to show you how much fun it is.”
A guard burst into the cabin. “Doc, there’s nobody there! We’ve scoured the ship.”
“You think he just floated away in his space suit?” Doc growled. “Find him. Tawney only needs one of them, but we can’t take a chance on the other one getting back—” He broke off, his eyes on the view screen. “Did you check those scout ships?”
“No, I thought—”
“Get down there and check them.” Doc turned back to the view screen impatiently.
Greg caught Johnny’s eye, saw the big miner’s worried frown. “Where is he?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. Thought you did.”
“All I know is he had some kind of scheme in mind.”
“Shut up,” Doc said to them. “If you’re smart, you’ll be strapping down before we—” He broke off in midsentence, listening.
Suddenly, the Ranger ship had begun to vibrate. Somewhere, far away, there was the muffled rumble of engines.
Doc whirled to the view screen. Greg and Johnny looked at the same instant, and Johnny groaned.
Below them, the Scavengers jets were flaring. First the pale starter flame, then a long stream of fire, growing longer as the engines developed thrust.
Doc slammed down a switch, roared into the speaker. “That scout ship—stop it! He’s trying to make a break!”
Two guards appeared at the lode almost instantly, but it was too late. Already she was straining at her magnetic cable moorings; then the exhaust flared, and the little scout ship leaped away from the orbit ship, moving out at a tangent to the asteroid’s orbit, picking up speed, moving faster and faster. . ..
In toward the orbit of Mars.
Doc had gone pale. Now he snapped on the speaker again. “Frank? Stand by on missile control. He’s asking for it.”
“Right,” a voice came back. “I’m sighting in.”
The Scavenger was moving fast now, dwindling in the view screen. One panel of the screen went telescopic to track her. “All right,” Doc said. “Fire one and two.”
From both sides of the Ranger, tiny rockets flared. Like twin bullets the homing shells moved out, side by side, in the track of the escaping Scavenger. With a strangled cry, Greg leaped forward, but Johnny caught his arm.
“Johnny, Tom’s on that thing!”
I know. But he’s got a chance.”
Already the homing shells were out of sight; only the twin flares were visible. Greg stared helplessly at the tiny light spot of the Scavenger. At first she had been moving straight, but now she was dodging and twisting, her side jets flaring at irregular intervals. The twin pursuit shells mimicked each change in course, drawing closer to her every second.
There was a flash, so brilliant it nearly blinded them, and the Scavenger burst apart in space. The second shell struck a fragment; there was another flash. Then there was nothing but a nebulous powdering of tiny metal fragments.
The last run of the Scavenger had ended.
Dazed, Greg turned away from the screen, and somewhere, as if in a dream, he heard Doc saying, “All right, boys, strap this pair down. We’ve got a lot of work to do before we can get out of here.”
Chapter Seven
Prisoners
Wherever they were planning to take them, the captors took great pains to make sure that their prisoners did not escape before they were underway. Greg and Johnny were strapped down securely into acceleration cots. Two burly guards were assigned to them. The guards took their job seriously. One of them watched the captives at all times, and both held their stunners on ready.
Meanwhile, under Doc’s orders, the crew of the Jupiter Equilateral ship began a systematic looting of the orbit ship they had disabled. Earlier they had merely searched the cabins and compartments. Now a steady stream of pressure suited men crossed through the airlocks into the crippled vessel and marched back with packing cases full of tape records, microfilm spools, stored computer data—anything that might conceivably contain information. The control cabin was literally torn apart. Every storage hold was ransacked.
A team of six men was dispatched to the asteroid surface, searching for any sign of mining or prospecting activity. They came back an hour later, long-faced and empty-handed. Doc took their reports, his scowl growing deeper and deeper.
Finally the last of the searchers reported in. “Doc, we’ve scraped it clean, and there’s nothing there. Not one thing that we didn’t check before.”
“There’s got to be something there,” Doc said.
“You tell me where else to look, and I’ll do it.”
Doc shook his head ominously. “Tawney’s not going to like it,” he said. “There’s no other place it could be.”
“Well, at least we have this pair,” the other said, jerking a thumb at Greg and Johnny. “They’ll know.”
Doc looked at them darkly. “Yes, and they’ll tell, too> or I don’t know Tawney.”
Greg watched all this happening. He heard the noises, saw the packing cases come through the cabin, and still he could not quite believe it. He had had nightmares, years before, when horrible things seemed to be happening around him without quite including him. Now this seemed like one of those nightmares. He kept telling himself that it wasn’t true, that the thing he had seen happen to the Scavenger had not really happened at all. But unlike the others, this nightmare didn’t go away. It was real, and this time he was part of it.
He and Johnny. He saw Johnny on the cot next to him, watching the busy crewmen with dull eyes, and he knew that it had hit Johnny as hard as it hit him. Except for the guards, the crewmen hardly noticed them; it was as though what had happened to the Scavenger was just part of the day’s work to them, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. At one point Greg caught a few words, as a couple of men paused for a smoke; there was nothing but pleased satisfaction in. their voices. “Frankie done a great job of shootin’, huh?”