"Yes. Some mopping up, but, is McHinny's gadget set for use?"
"Yes, sir. All set."
"There's a ship coming up," said Trent. "It got away. Tell him to try his gadget on it. He claims it'll work on a Lawlor drive too, now. If it doesn't, use our two coils to blow their overdrive."
"Yes, sir! Anything else?"
"Nothing," said Trent.
Now, and it seemed very suddenly, the sun rose in splendor, with the sky a vivid crimson until past the zenith. All the mountain flanks glowed a ruddy color, and the valley of the pirate base was filled with multiple reflections of the rosy glare.
Again there seemed little activity of any sort. But Trent walked leisurely back to what activity there was. He picked up half a dozen men. He led them into a toppled ship. He and they made full use of their training and their rehearsals of combat tactics in the recesses and corridors and the corners of the less-visited parts of a spaceship. When they came out—they'd entered by a cargo door, but they came out through an airlock—they brought three injured men and they left others behind who would need burial later.
They went into a second ship. There were two shots from inside this one. A third. Trent was satisfied with the quality of their behavior. In his presence they felt some embarrassment about looting. He left them and put a second group of six to work on other ships.
Presently he came back to Marian. She looked tensely composed, but her eyes brightened when she saw him. She took off a space helmet a Hecla-salvage man had brought out of a ship. The former prisoners were all supplied and the man of the Hecla salvage operation looked at once complacent because of their gratitude and gloomy because he'd missed his full share of the fighting.
"I think," said Trent, "that we're doing all right. Do you know of any other prisoners?"
"We… were told there were some," said Marian. "They're welded in one of those hulks. They're waiting as we were… to be killed if the Cytheria didn't bring back acceptance of the pirates' terms."
Trent nodded to his followers.
"Take a torch, if you can find one," he ordered, "and look over those ships. Any that are welded shut, cut open and let the people out. Of course there may be one or two pirates left. Use your own judgement."
The group of Yarrow and Hecla-salvage hands went briskly and hopefully away. They would find prisoners in not less than three of the twenty-some still-standing ships. They'd be unaware of what had happened in the valley since just before sunrise. They'd be terrified when called on, believing it a summons to atrocity and murder. And they would be hysterically grateful when they found out it was not.
Then the space-phone dangling from Trent's neck made noises.
"Calling Captain Trent! Calling Captain Trent! Yarrow calling Captain Trent!"
Trent answered, and the mate's voice sounded exultant to a degree Trent had never heard before.
"The gadget worked, Captain! It worked! McHinny worked it himself, with the rising ship in plain view and rising right past us. She cut her rockets and flicked into overdrive and we hit the overdrive button with McHinny at the gadget in the fraction of a second afterward! And she popped back out to normal space! She's still rising, but she can't accelerate any more! Her drive and her overdrive are both blown out and she's losing velocity! She'll go up a while longer, and then she'll fall back! I figure she'll hit somewhere in mid-ocean in two hours and a half. But she'll be half-way melted down when she hits, and what's left will never come up again!"
"I don't suppose it will," agreed Trent. "All right. Very nice work! I'll call you back later."
He turned to Marian. She looked at him with warm eyes. He said, "There's a lot of stuff to attend to. We have to make sure about mopping up any pirates who may still be loose. I don't think there'll be many. Then we have to get the prisoners organized, taking care of their own food and so on. There are more than a hundred of them. And we have to find out if any pirate ship is still out cruising. I don't think there will be, but the Yarrow can blow the drive of any other ship in space, with two overdrive coils in parallel. We don't have to worry about them!"
It was not exactly the sort of speech a man would be expected to make under the circumstances. It was very businesslike. In fact, he was talking business.
"Then," he said, frowning thoughtfully, "I have to post salvage-claim notices on the ships here. I have to make a formal claim that each one has been made available for recovery and repair by my actions, in my chartered ship—I've salvage rights—and my men in my employ. Actually, I can sell these ships where they are, the purchasers to come and repair and remove them. I may do so if I need funds. But most of them will be salvaged like the Hecla was, and I'll claim salvage on each as I did on the Hecla."
She listened. But her expression became uncertain. It was even puzzled. She looked at him, uncomprehending.
"You asked me," said Trent somehow formally, "to come and talk to your business agent and to you on Sira. I said I'd try, and then I lifted off without doing so. I should apologize."
She looked genuinely bewildered.
"But… but that doesn't matter!" she protested. "I—"
"I still have those things to attend to," said Trent. His tone was rueful. "But—"
"But—"
"But then I'll be heading for Loren," he told her. "I'll have to arrange for other ships to come and pick up all the extra people. I… I'll be very glad if you'll come on the Yarrow when I head for Loren. I can take a few other passengers. You can pick them out, if you like. And… ah… I won't have business demands on my time between here and Loren."
She stared at him.
"In fact," said Captain Trent, and now he was embarrassed, "in fact I… find that I… well… would like very much to have you as my guest on the Yarrow. I like the way you… react to emergencies. I'd like to be… better acquainted. I've never faced this… situation before and I don't know how to say what I mean. I certainly haven't managed to do it so far!"
Marian's expression changed. From seeming bewildered, she looked suddenly and pleasantly understanding.
"But, I think you did!" She smiled at him. "I think you said it beautifully! I'd… like to say the same thing as well as you did. Will you pretend that I have?"
Trent looked at once acutely uncomfortable and very much relieved.
"We'll talk it over on the way to Loren."
Then he turned away. Marian smiled after him. And she didn't look in the least puzzled. She smiled very confidently.
On the way to Loren, McHinny insisted that he wanted to show Trent how beautifully his for-the-third-time reconstructed pirate-frustrator worked. He explained that a part he'd used in building the unit for the Yarrow had required a certain amount of induction. The idea was that current flowing from the bus-bars to the capacitors had resistance to overcome in the first microseconds of current flow. Therefore the capacitors charged gradually, without overload of the current cables. But the manufactured article in the Yarrow's unit had been defective. With no inductive resistance to control the current going into the gadget, it amounted to a short-circuit. The gadget had blown every time. It couldn't be avoided.
But on the way to the pirate base, said McHinny truculently, the possibility had occurred to him. He'd installed another induction unit in his gadget. And consequently he'd destroyed the one pirate which would otherwise have escaped. Trent opened his mouth to make a correction. The fleeing pirate ship wouldn't have escaped. The mate had orders to blow it with the Yarrow's overdrive if McHinny's gadget didn't work. But then Trent shrugged. It didn't matter.