2]
Brecken arose and crept furtively to the door. He leaned out to peerdown the corridor. The nervous Truesdale bounced up to crowd behind him.Phillips and the girl looked at each other; she shrugged, and they toogot to their feet. She turned to the instrument panels; and after amoment, Phillips joined her.
"How have they got it?" he asked. "Controls locked?"
"No," murmured Donna. "Don't need to; we're just coasting. Nice job,though. Fast as a racer, I imagine."
"You know something about racers?"
"I used to think I did," she answered, shortly.
He saw pain darken her blue eyes and decided to probe no further.Instead, he wandered about, inspecting the instruments. A few minuteslater, with a spaceman's indefinable alertness, he felt a change in theship.
"They still aboard?" he called to Truesdale, who remained at the dooralthough Brecken had disappeared.
The youth glanced over his shoulder but did not trouble to reply.Phillips' jaw set, and he took a quick step toward the other. Before hereached the doorway, however, Brecken returned from the corridor.Shouldering Truesdale aside, he strode into the control room. "Well," heannounced, "the old fool hopped off like he said. Got a viewer in here?"
"I have it on now," called Donna from the instrument desk. "There hegoes."
They gathered around the screen to watch. Near one edge was the image ofanother ship, with several spacesuited figures clustered around itsentrance port. The girl made an adjustment, and the view crept over tothe center of the screen just as the last of the figures vanished intothe opening. Almost immediately, the other rocket slanted away on a newcourse.
Donna followed it on the screen until the brief flashes of its jets weredimmed by a new radiance--the ruddy disk of Mars. "We _are_ where hesaid," she admitted. "Now what?"
She looked at Phillips, who merely shrugged. "What do you make of it?"she insisted.
"Pretty much as he said, probably," answered the engineer. "He's headingfor Deimos, I suppose. I hear they're landscaping the whole moon--it'sonly about five miles in diameter--and building a new space station fora radio beacon and relay."
"Does that log say anything about the plague ship?" asked Truesdalenervously.
Donna scanned the observation record, then adjusted the viewer. The redradiance of Mars fled, to be replaced by a dimmer scene of distantstars.
"In there someplace," she said. "Out of range of this screen, but wecould probably locate it with detector instruments."
"Why all the jabber?" demanded Brecken. "Let's get going!"
Phillips stared at him. "What's the rush? Did he sell you that easily?"
"Huh? Oh, hell, no! I mean let's make a dive for Mars. They were dumb toset us loose with a fast ship. We're dumber if we don't use it!"
"That's right," agreed Truesdale eagerly. "We don't owe them anything.They owe us; for the years they took out of our lives!"
* * * * *
Truesdale had a point there, Phillips felt. This could grow into quite adiscussion, and he was not sure which side he wanted to take. He had nogreat urge to become a hero, but on the other hand there was somethingabout Brecken that aroused a certain obstinacy in him.
"Wait a minute!" Donna protested; "what do you think you're going todo?"
"Slip into a curve for Mars," said Brecken. "Slow down enough to take tochutes an' let this can smack up in the deserts somewhere. They'll neverknow if we got out, an' we'll be on our own."
The girl turned to Phillips. "How about you?" she asked. "Don't youthink we should at least consider what Varret told us? If this plague isas dangerous as he says, this is no time to--"
"Do you _have_ to be so bloodthirsty?" complained Truesdale.
"I don't want to kill anybody," declared the girl; "maybe we could justdisable the cruiser."
"Aw, kill your jets!" Brecken broke in. "I've been waiting for a chancelike this for years. Don't get any ideas!"
"But listen!" pleaded Donna. "It's a terrible thing, but if we don't doit, we won't be safe on Mars ourselves; they'll land and set an epidemicloose."
"I'll take my chances with it," said Brecken. "You're supposed to knowsomething about piloting. Now get us on a curve for Mars, an' be snappyabout it!"
Donna turned desperately to Phillips.
"Why not look over the ship," the engineer suggested, "before we blastoff on half our jets? We can make up our minds when we see what we havefor fuel and weapons."
Brecken opened his mouth to object, but was smitten by an unpleasantthought. "Suppose they didn't leave us enough fuel to make Mars!"
"We can find out soon enough," said Phillips, leading the way to thedoor.
They trooped down the corridor on his heels, past the few closet-likecompartments set aside for living quarters. It was a single-deck ship,with storage compartments above and below for fuel, oxygen, and othernecessities. The corridor was liberally supplied with handrails,apparently in case of failure of the artificial gravity system.
About halfway to the end, another passage crossed the fore-and-aft one,and a few steps farther was a ladder. This extended up and down avertical well, which in space amounted to a second cross corridor.Phillips was right when he guessed that the door beyond opened into therocket room.
The others were bored by the power plant of the ship. The engineer,however, could not repress a thrill at once more standing surrounded bythe gauges, valves, and pumps with which he had formerly lived. Hestrode about, examining and comprehending such appliances as seemed newsince his last service in space.
"How about it?" demanded Brecken. "Can you handle it?"
"Sure," answered Phillips confidently. "Mostly automatic anyway."
"Then we can get movin' whenever we want?"
"I suppose so. The tanks are nearly full; let's find those spacetorpedoes the old man mentioned."
"Maybe it won't hurt, at that," grumbled Brecken.
* * * * *
He led the way out, but paused indecisively. Phillips stepped past himand considered the cross passages near the midpoint of the corridor.Those in the plane of the control room deck probably led to port andstarboard airlocks, he reasoned, so the others might lead to the torpedoturrets.
He went to the vertical well and started up the ladder, hearing theothers follow. At the top, he was confronted by a hatch with a reddanger sign. Glancing about, he located the gauges that reported the airpressure beyond. Normal.
"Make a little room," he said, looking down to Brecken.
The big, ruddy face retreated a few rungs. Phillips could hear theothers scrambling further down. He got his head out of the way beforepulling the switch that opened the hatch. With a subdued humming ofelectric motors, the massively constructed door swung down. One afteranother, they pulled themselves up into the compartment.
"This must be where they set controls for launching," guessed Phillips,leaning back against a rack of emergency spacesuits. "That intercomscreen on the bulkhead is probably plugged in to the control room. Looksas if the torpedoes themselves are stored under that hatch at the afterend."
"How do they kick them off?" asked Brecken.
"Those conveyor belts run them into tubes in the forward bulkhead. Acharge of compressed air blows them out, and then the rockets arestarted and controlled by radio."
"You mean we have to point at a target to fire?"
"Oh, no. Once the rockets are going, the torpedo can be maneuvered andaimed anywhere by remote control."
"I've seen enough," announced Truesdale. "I'm hungry."
At that, they all decided to return to the main deck. Phillipscarefully closed the airtight hatch as they left, then followed theothers in search of the galley.
Later, after a very unsatisfactory meal of packaged concentrates, theyloitered sullenly in the control room once more while Donna studied thecontrols. Phillips had finally decided that he could wear the thirdspacesuit on the rack if he had to. He was idly examining
the toolssupplied with it when his thoughts were interrupted.
Young Truesdale had been monkeying with a range indicator for some time,but now his sharp outcry drew all eyes to him.
The others immediately gathered to peer over his shoulder. A needleflickered wildly from one side of the dial to the other.
"Here! Get it balanced," said Phillips, thrusting a powerful arm betweenthe crowded bodies. As his deft adjustment steadied the needle, hestepped back and leaned against the bulkhead to study their