Science fiction; Short stories; Space colonies -- Fiction
They strapped themselves to the seats in the _Prometheus_' control
room. Bert depressed the throttle. Rocket jets flamed. The rebuilt
freighter lifted heavily and gained momentum toward a speed of miles
per second. In the rear-vision screen the Kraskows saw two police
spaceboats flashing the blue signal for them to land.
Bert set the _Prometheus_ in an orbit around Titan, about a thousand
miles above the bleak and dried out surface of this Saturnian
satellite. Thus the ship became a little moon of a moon.
Alice was shouting into the mike of the large radio transmitter:
"Colonists at Camp Titan! Enter your ship! Blast into space for
safety! We are about to use the Big Pill! Colonists at Camp Titan!
Blast for safety!... Police boats, give us room! Don't interfere!..."
This was the start of wild drama. When Alice switched from
transmission to reception, the calls from the patrol craft were stern:
"Freighter _Prometheus_, this is the Space Patrol. Proceed to a
landing or we blast."
But these calls still seemed secondary, compared to other words also
coming from the receiver, like another, overlapping radio program. It
was Trenton Lauren's scared voice that spoke:
"Space Colonists' Supply, Incorporated, calling deep-space units of
patrol! Send more help to Titan! Maniac named Kraskow amuck with
freighter _Prometheus_, known to contain huge bomb! Destroy on sight:
Bomb supposed to be invention of group headed by one, Emil Kramer,
renegade scientist believed to have a grudge against S. C. S. Claims
for invention wholly extravagant and unbased. Hurry, deep-space units
of Patrol. More help! Or all of Titan will be flooded with heat and
deadly radioactivity! Hurry.... Hurry.... Hurry...."
Just then the _Prometheus_ rocked from the impact of a blaster-beam;
and though the Kraskows could not see the effect of the weapon, they
knew that there were glowing spots on their ship's tough hull. If the
Patrol boats could bear down with their beams on a particular area for
a few seconds, a mighty episode could end violently before it had a
chance to start.
Alice's small hands were on the complicated aiming and firing
mechanism of the heavy blaster, mounted externally on the hull of the
_Prometheus_.
"I'll keep the cops at a distance with a few near-misses," she said.
"Maybe they aren't too anxious to take the chance of setting off the
Big Pill, anyway. Let me worry about them, Bert. Just do what you've
got to do...."
They had shut off their radio. There was no need to listen to the
somewhat hysterical repetitions of what had come through before.
Every few moments there was a burst of humming sound as Alice fired.
Bert put additional power into the rockets to surpass fixed orbital
speed; but he held the ship to a tight curve around Titan. It was best
to cover distance as quickly as possible. In his speeding course, he
passed almost over the camp. But his purpose was to bomb a point at
antipodes from it, halfway around this Saturnian moon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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