Adventure stories; Asteroid belt -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Space pirates -- Fiction; Space ships -- Fiction
His partner nodded glumly. "Here he comes! And we can't touch him."
Nord Holber laughed again. "That's what he thinks! Mike, there's high
frequency current in that cable."
He shot their battered fighter aside--to port--as the fiery beam
flashed upward. The slack cable passed under and over the pirate's
ship. Nord sent the Patrol vessel down, then to starboard and up again,
as Kadine's fiery pencil of destruction whipped toward them.
"He doesn't suspect a thing," Holber said tensely. "It looks like fancy
dodging we're doing. But look at the cable, partner! A couple more
times around--"
The plastic ship was weaving an intricate course, dodging, yet feinting
downward, only to dance upward and away--and the insulated cable was
wound loosely around the enemy craft.
"O.K., Mike," Nord said at last. "Reverse that winch, and pull the
cable out."
Doren, understanding breaking at last into his flaming blue eyes,
pressed the stud, and stared into the lower screen. "A high frequency
current," he whispered, "flowing through a coil around a metal
core--Kadine's steel hull!"
Within the metal hull of Dhain Kadine's spacer induced electrical
current lashed a torrent of irresistible energy against sluggish
electro-magnetic potentialities. Resistance of the steel produced
heat--heat more intense than Mike Doren's beam could create. Despite
the bulk of the outlaw ship within those few turns of cable, the
induced current, surging through the steel drove the temperature
higher--higher--toward the melting point itself! And, in the
inner-hull, it was the same--rising temperature, heat radiating,
warming the air within the cabin--
"An induction furnace," said Nord Holber quietly. "It must be pretty
warm inside there now!"
Before him, the visaphone jangled suddenly. The screen glowed as he
snapped it on. In it the dark, hawklike face of Dhain Kadine, was a
blurred, flickering, terror-white, blob. His voice shouted hoarse
unintelligible words--rose almost to a shriek. Sweat drenched his
clothes--poured from every pore of his skin, flashed dancing highlights
on the screen.
Nord Holber's fist and arm gestured in unmistakable pantomime--_jump!_
"Shut the current off quick, Mike," he ordered, as the space suited
figure of Dhain Kadine leaped frantically through the port of the black
ship below them. "The Patrol will want everything that's in that ship!"
Mike Doren pressed the stud, and his big mouth spread in a contented
smile as the other swung their fighter through space at top speed,
uncoiling the cable.
"When it cools down," Nord said, "we'll go aboard. After we give Kadine
and the papers to the _Jovian Nymph_, we'll go back to base in his
ship. I don't want to make the trip all the way in this space suit."
His partner's eyes lit up. "O.K. But, when we get to Mars Base, we'll
ride our ship and drag that steel monstrosity in on the cable. After
all, it's the last catch of 'asteroid fishing,' and the biggest!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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