"Hey!" yelled Mason. "I'm--I'm floating!"

"It's the gravity generators," yelled Loring. "Corbett's pulled a fast one. We're in free fall!"

Tom lifted his feet and pushed as hard as he could against the control panel. He shot out of the chair and across the control room just as Loring fired his ray gun. There was a loud hiss as the gun was fired, and then the thud of a body against the wall, as Loring was suddenly shoved by the recoil of the charge.

Tom huddled in the upper corner of the control deck like a spider, his legs drawn up underneath him waiting for Mason to fire. But the smaller s.p.a.ceman was tumbling head over heels in the center of the room. The more he exerted himself, the more helpless he became. His arms and legs splayed out in an effort to level himself, as he kept trying to fire the ray gun.

Tom saw his chance and lunged through the air again, straight at the floating s.p.a.ceman. He pa.s.sed him in mid-air. Mason made an attempt to grab him, but Tom wrenched his body to one side and pulled the ray gun out of the other's hand.

He flipped over and turned his attention to Loring who was more dangerous, since he was now backed up against a bulkhead waiting for Tom to present a steady target. Loring started to fire, but Tom saw him in time and shot away from the wall toward the hatch. He twisted his body completely around, and with his shoulder hunched over, fired at Loring with his ray gun. The charge hit the target and Loring became rigid, his body slowly floating above the deck. His back to the wall, braced for the recoil, Tom brought his arm around slowly and aimed at Mason. He fired, and the s.p.a.ceman stiffened.

Tom smiled. Neither of the s.p.a.cemen would give him any more trouble now.

He pushed slightly to the left and shot over to the valve that Mason had unwittingly turned off. Tom turned it on and clung to an overhead pipe until he felt the rea.s.suring grip of the synthetic gravity pull him to the deck. Loring and Mason, in the same positions they had been in when Tom fired, settled slowly to the deck. Tom walked over and looked at both of them. He knew they could hear him.

"For smart s.p.a.cemen like you two," said Tom, "you sure forgot your basic physics. Newton's laws of motion, remember? Everything in motion tends to keep going at the same speed, unless influenced by an outside force.

Firing the ray gun was the outside force that will land you right on a prison asteroid! And you'd better start praying that I can pull those fellows off that satellite, because if I don't, you'll wind up frying in the sun with us!"

He started to drag them to a locker and release them from the effects of the ray blast, but, remembering their cold-blooded condemnation of Connel and the others to death on the satellite, he decided to let them remain where they were.

He turned to the control board and flipped on the microphone. He was too far away to pick up an image on the teleceiver, but the others could hear him on the audio, if, thought Tom, they were still alive.

"Attention! Attention! _Polaris_ to Major Connel! Major Connel, can you hear me? Come in, Major Connel--Astro--Roger--somebody--come in!"

He turned away from the mike and fired the starboard jets full blast, making a sweeping curve in s.p.a.ce and heading the _Polaris_ back to Junior.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER 20

"There's only one answer, boys," said Connel. "Loring and Mason have escaped and taken over the ship. I can't think of any other reason Tom would abandon us like this."

The jet boat was crowded. Alfie, the smallest, was sitting on Astro's lap. For more than an hour they had circled above the copper satellite, searching the surrounding skies in vain for some sign of the _Polaris_.

"Major," said Roger, who was hunched over the steering wheel of the small s.p.a.ce craft, "we're almost out of fuel. We'd better drop down on the night side of Junior, the side away from the sun. At least there we'd be out of the direct heat."

"Very well, Roger," said Connel. "In fact, we could keep shifting into the night side every hour." Then he added quietly, thoughtfully, "But we're out of fuel, you said?"

"Yes, sir," said Roger. "There's just enough to get down." Roger sent the craft in a shallow dive. Suddenly the rockets cut out. The last of the fuel was gone. Roger glided the jet boat to a smooth stop on the night side of the planetoid.

"How much longer before the reactor units go up?" asked Shinny.

Connel turned, thinking he had heard something on the communicators, then answered Shinny's question. "Only four hours," he said.

The crew of s.p.a.cemen climbed out of the jet boat into the still blackness of the night side of the planet. There wasn't anything left to do.

They sat around on the hard surface of the planet, staring at the strange stars overhead.

"You know," said Astro, "I might be able to set up something to convert some of the U235 in the reactors to fuel the jet boat."

"Impossible, Astro," said Alfie. "You'd need a reduction gear. And not only that, but you haven't any tools to handle the ma.s.s. If you opened one of those boxes, you'd be fried immediately by the radiation!"

"Alfie's right," said Connel. "There's nothing to do but wait."

Major Connel turned his face up as far as he could in the huge fish-bowl helmet to stare at the sky. His eyes wandered from star cl.u.s.ter to star cl.u.s.ter, from glowing Regulus, to bright and powerful Sirius. He stifled a sigh. How much he had wanted to see more--and more--and more of the great wide, high, and deep! He remembered his early days as a youth on his first trip to Luna City; his first sensation at touching an alien world; his skipper, old, wise, and patient, who had given him his creed as a s.p.a.ceman: "Travel wide, deep, and high," the skipper had said to the young Connel, "but never so far, so wide, or so deep as to forget that you're an Earthman, or how to act like an Earthman!" Even now, years later, the gruff voice rang in his ears. It wasn't long after that that he had met Shinny. Connel smiled behind the protection of his helmet, as he looked at the wizened s.p.a.ceman, who was now old and toothless, but who still had the same merry twinkle in his eye that Connel had noticed the first time he saw him. Connel had signed on as first officer on a deep s.p.a.cer bound for t.i.tan. Shinny had come aboard and reported to Connel as rocketman. Shinny had promptly started roaring through the pa.s.sageways of the huge freighter in his nightshirt singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of old songs at the top of his voice. It had taken Connel four hours to find where Shinny had hidden the bottle of rocket juice! Connel laughed. He looked over at the old man fondly.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Say, Nick," said Connel, addressing the man by his given name for the first time, "you remember the time it took me four hours to find that bottle of rocket juice you hid on that old t.i.tan freighter?"

Shinny cackled, his thin voice coming over the headphones of the others as well as Connel's.

"I sure do, Lou!" replied Shinny, using Connel's first name. They were just old s.p.a.cemen now, reliving old times together. "Funny thing, though, you never knew I had two more bottles hidden in the tube chamber!"

"Why, you old s.p.a.ce crawler!" roared Connel. "You put one over on me!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Roger and Astro and Alfie had never known Connel's first name. They rolled the name over in their minds, fitting the name to the man.

Unknown to each other, they decided that the name fitted the man. Lou Connel!

"Say, Lou," asked Shinny, "where in the blessed universe did you come from? You never told me."

There was a long pause. "A place called Telfair Estates, in the deep South on the North American continent. I was raised on a farm close by.

I used to go fishing late at night and stare up at the stars." He paused again. "I ran away from home. I don't know if--if--anyone's still there or not. I never went back!"

There was a long silence as each man saw a small boy fishing late at night, barefoot, his toes dangling in the water, a worm wiggling on the end of a string, more interested in the stars that twinkled overhead than in any fish that might swim past and seize the hook.

"Where are you from, Nick?" asked Connel.

"Born in s.p.a.ce," cackled Shinny, "on a pa.s.senger freighter carrying colonists out to t.i.tan. Never had a breath of natural fresh air until I was almost a grown man. Nothing but synthetic stuff under the atmosphere screens. My father was a mining engineer. I was the only kid. One night a screen busted and nearly everybody suffocated or froze to death. My pa and ma was among 'em. I blasted off after that. Been in the deep ever since. And you know, by the blessed rings of Saturn, I'd be on a nice farm near Venusport, living on a pension, if you hadn't kicked me out of the Solar Guard!"

"Why, you broken down old piece of s.p.a.ce junk," roared Connel, "I oughta--" Connel never finished what he was going to say.

"Attention! Attention! Roger--Astro--Major Connel--come in, please! This is Tom on the _Polaris_!"

As if they had been struck by a bolt of lightning, the five s.p.a.cemen sat up and then raced to the jet boat.

"Connel to Corbett!" roared the major. "Where are you? What happened?"

"I haven't got time to explain now, sir," said Tom. "Loring and Mason escaped and forced me to take them to Tara. I managed to overcome them and blast back here. Meet me up about fifty miles above Junior, sir. I'm bringing the _Polaris_ in!"

"No!" yelled Connel. "It's no use, Tom. We're out of fuel. We've used up all our power."

"Then stand by," said Tom grimly. "I'm coming in for a landing!"