Science fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; War stories
Hartnett stood beneath the _Darkside's_ ventral valve on the metallic
soil of the little moon with Chavez and Orsov watching the progress
of the work. Lieutenant Morrow of the _Lysander_ and Lieutenant Griggs
of the _Argus_ joined them and stood in silence while the last of the
_Artemis'_ personnel was transferred into the _Darkside_. Tom Drew, the
commander of the _Artemis_ stood sadly apart watching the spacemen make
a ghost ship of his command.
On the eastern horizon, Saturn was rising into a black sky studded with
points of fiery brilliance. Quickly the ringed planet climbed into the
sky and flooded the tortured landscape of Hyperion with light. The men
at the _Darkside's_ valve stood watching the show of celestial grandeur
in awe. Orsov, for all his deep-space experience, could not help but
feel a twinge of vertigo as he looked up into the haloed face of the
heavenly giant that filled a quarter of the inverted bowl of ebony that
the heavens had become.
Everyone was relieved to lift ship, however, for the thought of being
caught grounded by any roving Martian spaceship was not pleasant to
contemplate. Atomic bombs had long been obsolete, but one such would
certainly suffice to exterminate four grounded spacecraft. Then too,
they were all glad to get away from the glaring spectre that so eerily
filled too much of the sky ... the ringed Saturn had a hypnotic effect
that left a man shaken.
In the Control of the _Darkside_ Chavez whispered to Scott: "We were
thinking that you were going to lose the _Darky_ ... and it turns out
that poor old Drew is the one who lost his command."
"He should be glad to get rid of it."
"But what," asked Chavez, "is the old man going to do with her?"
Scott shrugged and spoke succinctly. "Bait." His spirits had risen
considerably when Hartnett had left him in command of the _Darkside_,
contrary to his expectations. He reflected somewhat ruefully that it
did a man good to have a scare thrown into him from time to time. Even
now, rapidly approaching a quadrant heavy with Cat warships, he could
feel contented in merely feeling his beloved tin can responding under
his hands on the control panels.
A thousand yards behind and astern, the unmanned _Artemis_ followed
the _Darkside_ like a dog on a leash, its myriad functions controlled
by an invisible chain of subetheric impulses from jerry-rigged remote
controls on the _Darkside's_ gun-deck.
In the faint light of the faraway sun, where the irrepressible Blake
had sloshed paint on her flank, gleamed the legend: BOOBY TRAP.
Like shadows, the four ships of Flotilla Blue Three slipped through the
patrol cordons of the Martian Space Force. In the infinite vastnesses
of the interplanetary deeps they were unnoticed. Blast tubes silent,
guided only by the ever increasing gravitational attraction of mammoth
Uranus, and the reaction of whining gyroscopes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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