MacFife pointed to the Connie's nose. Projecting from it like great horns were the ship's steering tubes. Unlike the Federation cruiser, which blasted steam through internal tubes that did not project, the Connie used chemical fuel.

"Watch," MacFife said.

There were similar tubes on the Connie's stern, Rip knew. He wondered what they had to do with the plan.

MacFife walked to a wall communicator. "Follow instructions."

He turned to Rip. "Remember, lad, the Sagittarius is on the other side of the Connie, about to do the same thing."

Rip waited in silence, wondering.

Then the voice horn called. "Valve closed!"

A second voice yelled, "Blast!"

A tremor jarred its way through the entire ship, making the deck throb under Rip's feet. He saw that the ship's nose had swung away from the Connie. What in space—

"Blast!"

The nose swung into the Connie again, with a jar that sent Rip sliding into the clear plastic of the astrodome. His nose jammed into the plastic, but he didn't even wince, because he saw the Connie cruiser's steering tubes buckle under the Aquila's sudden shove.

And suddenly the picture was clear. The two Federation cruisers hadn't cared about getting into the Connie ship. They had only wanted an excuse to tie up to it so they could do what had just been done.

They had sheared off the enemy's steering tubes, first at the stern, then at the bow, leaving him helpless, able to go only forward or back in the direction in which he happened to be pointing!

MacFife had a broad grin on his face. As Rip started to speak, he held up his hand and pointed at a wall speaker.

The Connie commander came on the circuit. He screamed, "You planned that! You—you—"

Galliene's voice spoke soothingly. "But my dear commander! How can I apologize? Believe me, the man responsible will be reward—I mean, the man responsible will be disciplined. You may rest assured of it. How unfortunate! I am overcome with shame."

MacFife picked up a microphone. "Same here, Connie. A terrible accident. Aye, the man who did it will hear from me."

"It was no accident," the Connie screamed.

"Ah," Galliene replied, "but you cannot prove otherwise. Commander, do you realize what this means? You are helpless. Interplanetary law says that a helpless space ship must be salvaged and taken in tow by the nearest cruiser, no matter what its nationality. We will do this jointly, the Aquila and the Sagittarius. We will take turns towing you, my friend. We will haul you to Terra—like any other piece of space junk."

MacFife could remain quiet no longer. "Yes, mister. And that's no' the end o' it. We will collect the salvage fee. One half the value of the salvaged vessel. Aye! My men will like that, since we share and share alike on salvage. Now, put out a cable from your nose tube. I'll take ye in tow first."

He cut the communicator off and met Rip's grin.

The two spacemen had figured out the one way to repay the Connie for his attempts on the asteroid. They couldn't fire on him, but they could fake an accident that would cripple him and cost Consops millions of dollars in salvage fees.

Nor would Consops refuse to pay. Salvage law was clear. Whoever performed the salvage was not required to turn the ship back to its owners until the fee had been paid.

And there was another angle. The cruisers would tow the Connie into the Federation spaceport in New Mexico. If past experience was any indication, the Connie would lose about half its crew, perhaps more. They would claim sanctuary in the Federation.

Rip shook hands solemnly with the grinning Scotchman. It would be a long time before Consops tried piracy again.

"We'll be back at our family fight again tomorrow," MacFife said, "but today we celebrate together. Ah, lad, this is pure joy to me. I've had a score to settle with yon Connies for years. Now I've done it."

He put an arm around Rip's shoulders. "While I'm in a givin' mood, which is not the way of us Scots, is there anything ye'd like?"

Rip could think of only one thing. "A hot shower. For me and my men. And will you take the prisoners off our hands?"

"Yes to both. Anything else?"

"We'll need some rocket fuel. Terra says we have to correct course. Also, we'll need a nuclear charge to throw us into a braking ellipse. And we need a new landing boat. The sun baked the equipment out of ours."

MacFife nodded. "So be it. I'll send men to the asteroid to bring back the prisoners and your Planeteers." He smiled. "We'll let yon rock go by itself while hot showers and a good meal are had by all. Ye've earned it, lad."

Rip started to thank the Scot, but his stomach suddenly turned over, and black dizziness flooded in on him. He heard MacFife's sudden exclamation, felt hands on him.

White light blinded him. He shook his head and tried to keep his stomach from acting up. A voice asked, "Were you shielded from those nuclear blasts?"

"No," he said past a constricted throat. "Not from the last. We got some prompt radiation."

"When was that? The exact time?"

Rip tried to remember. He felt horrible. "It was twenty-three-oh-five."

"Bad," the voice said. "He must have taken enough roentgens of gamma and neutrons to reach or exceed the median-lethal dose."

Rip found his voice again. "Santos," he said urgently. "On the asteroid. He got it, too. The rest were shielded."

MacFife snapped orders. The ball-bat would have Santos in the ship within minutes. Being sick in a space suit was about the most unpleasant thing that could happen.

A hypospray tingled against Rip's arm. The drug penetrated, caught a quick lift to all parts of his body through the bloodstream. Consciousness slid away.



CHAPTER NINETEEN

Spacefall

Rip was never more eloquent. He argued, he begged, and he wheedled.

The Aquila's chief physician listened with polite interest, but he shook his head. "Lieutenant, you simply are not aware of the close call you've had. Another two hours without treatment, and we might not have been able to save you."

"I appreciate that," Rip assured him. "But I'm fine now, sir."

"You are not fine. You are anything but fine. We've loaded you with antibiotics and blood cell regenerator, and we've given you a total transfusion. You feel fine, but you're not."

The doctor looked at Rip's red hair. "That's a fine thatch of hair you have. In a week or two it will be gone, and you'll have no more hair than an egg. A well person doesn't lose hair. Your head will shine like a space helmet."

The ship's radiation safety officer had put both Rip's and Santos' dosimeters into his measuring equipment. They had taken over a hundred roentgens of hard radiation above the tolerance limit. This was the result of being caught unshielded when the last nuclear charge went off.

"Sir," Rip pleaded, "you can load us with suppressives. It's only a few days more before we reach Terra. You can keep us going until then. We'll both turn in for full treatment as soon as we get to the space platform. But we have to finish the job; can't you see that, sir?"

The doctor shook his head. "You're a fool, even for a Planeteer. Before you get over this, you'll be sicker than you've ever been. You have a month in bed waiting for you. If I let you go back to the asteroid, I'll only be delaying the time when you start full treatment."

"But the delay won't hurt if you inject us with suppressives, will it?" Rip asked quickly. "Don't they keep the sickness checked?"

"Yes, for a maximum of about ten days. Then they no longer have sufficient effect, and you come down with it."

"But it won't take ten days," Rip pointed out. "It will only take a couple, and it won't hurt us."

MacFife had arrived to hear the last exchange. He nodded sympathetically. "Doctor, I can appreciate how the lad feels. He started something, and he wants to finish it. If y'can let him, safely, I think ye should."

The doctor shrugged. "I can let him. There's a nine to one chance it will do him no harm. But the one chance is what I don't like."

"I'll know it if the suppressives start to wear off, won't I?" Rip asked.

"You certainly will. You'll get weaker rapidly."

"How rapidly?"

"Perhaps six hours. Perhaps more."

Rip nodded. "That's what I thought. Doctor, we're less than six hours from Terra by ship. If the stuff wears off, we can be in the hospital within a couple of hours. Once we go into a braking ellipse, we can reach a hospital in less than an hour by snapper-boat."

"Let him go," MacFife said.

The doctor wasn't happy about it, but he had run out of arguments. "All right, Commander—if you'll assume responsibility for getting him off the asteroid and into a Terra or space platform hospital in time."

"I'll do that," MacFife assured him. "Now get your hyposprays and fill him full of that stuff you use. The corporal, too."

"Sergeant," Rip corrected. His first action on getting back to the asteroid would be to recommend Santos' promotion to Terra base. He intended to recommend Kemp for corporal, too. He was sure the Planeteers at Terra would make the promotions.

The two Federation cruisers were still holding course along with the asteroid, the Connie cruiser between them.

Within an hour, Rip and Santos, both in false good health, thanks to medical magic, were on their way back to the asteroid in a ball-bat boat.

The remaining time passed quickly. The sun receded. The Planeteers corrected course. Rip sent in his recommendations for promotions and looked over the last nuclear crater to see why the blast had started the asteroid spinning.

The reason could only be guessed. The blast probably had opened a fault in the crystal, allowing the explosion to escape partially in the wrong direction.

Once the course was corrected, Rip calculated the position for the final nuclear charge. When the asteroid reached the correct position relative to Earth, the charge would not change its course but only slow its speed somewhat. The asteroid would go around Earth in a series of ever tightening ellipses, using Terra's gravity, plus rocket fuel, to slow it down to orbital speed.

When it reached the proper position, tubes of rocket fuel would change the course again, putting it into an orbit around Earth, close to the space platform. It wasn't practical to take the thorium rock in for a landing. They would lose control, and the asteroid would flame to Earth like the greatest meteor ever to hit the planet.

Putting the asteroid into orbit around Earth was actually the most delicate part of the whole trip, but Rip wasn't worried. He had the facilities of Terra base within easy reach by communicator. He dictated his data and let them do the mathematics on the giant electronic computers.

He and his men rode the gray planet past the moon, so close they could almost see the Planeteer lunar base, circled Terra in a series of ellipses, and finally blasted the asteroid into its final orbit within sight of the space platform.

Landing craft and snapper-boats swarmed to meet them, and within an hour after their arrival the Planeteers were surrounded by spacemen, cadets from the platform, and officers and men wearing Planeteer black.

A cadet approached Rip and looked at him with awe. "Sir, I don't know how you ever did it!"

And Rip, his eyes on the great curve of Earth, answered casually, "There's one thing every space chick has to learn if he's going to be a Planeteer. There's always a way to do anything. To be a Planeteer, you have to be able to figure out the way."

A new voice said, "Now, that's real wisdom!"

Rip turned quickly and looked through a helmet at the grinning face of Maj. Joe Barris.

Barris spoke as though to himself, but Rip turned red as his hair. "Funny how fast a man ages in space," the Planeteer major remarked. "Take Foster. A few weeks ago he was just a cadet, a raw recruit who had never met high vack. Now he's talking like the grandfather of all space. I don't know how the Special Order Squadrons ever got along before he became an officer."

Rip had been feeling a little too proud of himself.

"It's good to get back," Rip said.



CHAPTER TWENTY

On the Platform

There were two things Rip could see from his hospital bed on the space platform. One was the great curve of Earth. He was anxious to get out of the hospital and back to Terra.

The second thing was the asteroid. Spacemen were at work on it, slowly cutting it to pieces. The pieces were small enough to be carried back to Earth in supply rockets. It would be a long time before the asteroid was completely cut up and transported to Terra base.

Sergeant Major Koa came into the hospital ward and sat on Rip's bed. The plastifoam mattress compressed under his weight. "How are you feeling, sir?"

"Pretty good," Rip replied. The worst of the radiation sickness was over, and he was mending fast. Here and there were little bloodstains, just below the surface of his skin, and he had no more hair than a plastic ball. Otherwise he looked normal. The stains would go away, and his hair would grow back in a few weeks.

Santos, now officially a sergeant, was in the same condition. The rest of Rip's Planeteers had resumed duties on the space platform. He saw them frequently, because they made a point of dropping in whenever they were near the hospital area.

Koa looked out at the asteroid. "I sort of hate to see that rock cut up. There isn't much about a chunk of thorium to get sentimental over, but after fighting for it the way we did, it doesn't seem right to cut it into blocks."

"I know how you feel," Rip admitted, "but, after all, that's what we brought it back for."

He studied Koa's dark face. The sergeant major had something on his mind. "Got vack worms chewing at you?" he asked. Vack worms were a spaceman's equivalent of "the blues."

"Not exactly, sir. I happened to overhear the doctor talking today. You're due for a leave in a week."

"That's good news!" Rip exclaimed. "You're not unhappy about it, are you?"

Koa shrugged. "We were all hoping we'd be together on our next assignment. The gang liked serving under you. But we're overdue for shipment to somewhere, and if you take eight weeks' leave, we'll be gone by the time you come back to the platform."

"I liked serving with all of you, too," Rip replied. "I watched the way you all behaved when the space flap was getting tough, and it made me proud to be a Planeteer."

Maj. Joe Barris came in. He was carrying an envelope in his hand.

"Hello, Rip. How are you, Koa? Am I interrupting a private talk?"

"No, Major," Koa replied. "We're just passing the time. Want me to leave?"

"Stay here," Barris said. "This concerns you, too. I've been reassigned. My eight years on the platform are up, and that's all an instructor gets. Now I'm off for space on another job."

Rip knew that instructors were assigned for eight-year periods. And he knew that the major's specialty was the Planeteer science of exploration, a specialty which required him to be an expert in biology, zoology, anthropology, navigation and astrogation, and land fighting—not to mention a half dozen lesser things. Only ten Planeteers rated expert in exploration, and all were captains or majors.

"Where are you going?" Rip asked. "Off to explore something?"

"That's it." Major Barris smiled. "Remember once I said that when they gave me the job of cleaning up the goopies on Ganymede, I'd ask for you as a platoon leader?"

Rip stared. "Don't tell me that's your assignment!"

"Almost. Tell me, would you recommend any more of your men for promotion? I'll need a new sergeant and two more corporals."

Rip thought it over. "Koa can check me on this. I'd suggest making Pederson a sergeant and Dowst and Dominico corporals. Kemp and Santos already have promotions."

"That would be my choice, too," Koa agreed.

"Fine." Barris tapped the envelope. "I'll correct the orders in here and recommend the promotions. We'll get sixteen new recruits from the graduating class at Luna, and that will complete the platoon I'm supposed to organize. Two full platoons are waiting, and the new platoon will give me a full-strength squadron, except for new officers. How about Flip Villa for a platoon commander, Rip?"

Rip knew the Mexican officer was among the best of his own graduating class. "I have to admit prejudice," he warned. "Flip is a pal of mine. But I don't think you could do better." His curiosity got the better of him, and he asked "Can you tell me what this is all about?"

Joe Barris reached over and rubbed Rip's bald head. "By the time fur grows back on that irradiated dome of yours, I'll be on my way with Koa, Pederson, and the new recruits. Santos and the rest of your crew will report to Terra base. Flip Villa will join them there. You'll be on Earth leave for eight weeks, but it will take about that much time for Flip and the men to assemble the supplies and equipment we'll need."

He pulled a sheaf of papers out of the envelope. "Koa, here are orders for you and your men. They say you're to report to Special Order Squadron Seven, on Ganymede. SOS Seven is a new squadron, the first one organized exclusively for exploration duties, and I'm its commanding officer. Koa, you'll be my senior noncommissioned officer. I want you and Pederson with me, because you can organize the new recruits en route. They have a lot more to learn from you than they got in their two years of training. You'll make real Planeteers out of 'em."

He picked a paper from the sheaf and waived it at Rip. "This is for you, Lieutenant Foster." He read, "Foster, R. I. P., Lieutenant, SOS. Serial seven-nine-four-three. Authorized eight weeks' leave upon discharge from hospital. Upon completion of leave, subject officer will report to Terra base for transportation to SOS Seven on Ganymede."

Joe Barris handed Rip his new orders. "You'll be on the same ship with Flip Villa and your men. Flip will be another of my platoon leaders. I'll be waiting for you on Ganymede. The moons of Jupiter are going to be our home for quite a while, Rip. Our first assignment is to explore Callisto from pole to pole."

Rip didn't know what to say. To serve under Barris, to have his own men in a regular squadron platoon, to have Flip Villa in the same outfit, and to be assigned to exploration duty—dirtiest but most exciting of all Planeteer jobs—was just too much. He couldn't say anything. He could only grin.

Maj. Joe Barris looked at Rip's shiny head and chuckled. "From what I hear of Callisto, we're in for a rough time. Your hair will probably grow back just in time to turn gray!"

THE END