He went back through the airlock into the control cabin. He put fire
in the rockets. He turned on the forward viewscreen. When it came to
life the image was strangely flat. It took a minute for him to diagnose
the trouble. One of the video eyes was out of order. The image was two
dimensional.
How much more damage was there? His mind crowded with thoughts of what
he would do to Stella when he caught her, then he began a systematic
survey.
The receiving set worked okay. At full volume it brought the
characteristic sing-song static of space, held within definite wave
bands. He turned on the transmitter. When he tried to broadcast he saw
the trouble. The antenna kw meter jammed the needle. That meant the
antenna was shorted against the shell.
He discovered something else he should have thought of at once. This
ship of Stella's had no weapons.
He groaned. _Damn her. She'll make the fool play of trying to get the
robot to give itself up. If it's got half a brain it will pretend to
until it can get hold of her--and it's got a good deal more than half
a brain. It will have her and all the weapons. I should turn around
and go back. I should radio a report and call for more help. But I've
got to fix the transmitter first and keep her in sight so I know where
she's going._
He cut the rockets and went outside to repair the antenna. He noticed
with some satisfaction that Stella cut the SP47's rockets so as not to
get too far ahead of him. He grinned to himself. She wanted her own
way, but she wanted him there to pull her out of a pinch.
The _Hell Bat's_ antenna couldn't be repaired. Most of it had been shot
away by the mine blast, and Larry was quite sure that Stella didn't
carry spare parts with her.
When he got back in the ship her voice was coming through the radio.
"Larry. Are you all right?"
"Yes I'm all right, no thanks to you," he growled. But there was no
radio to carry his voice to her. _The suit radio!_ He went out again
and tried to reach her. It was no use. She would be tuned to the ship
radio wavelength and not think of the other. He gave it up.
Time passed slowly for him. He stared hour after hour at the rocket
tail of the ship ahead.
"Larry!" Stella's voice exploded into his thoughts. "The _trackers_
have run out of trail. What do I do now? What does it mean?"
He had an impulse to do nothing. She would realize in another minute
what had happened though, and then she would decelerate too fast for
him to keep pace.
He swung the _Hell Bat_ about on its gyros. The stern screen, working
on both eyes in sharp three-dimension, showed that she had gotten the
idea. SP47 was also swinging around.
Larry turned the video eyes up to full magnification and searched
ahead. Eventually he saw it. A small globular mass of rock. And on it
rested a ship with _SURPLUS JUNK CO._ in bold blue letters.
_God! It's a trap. If 2615 didn't want us to see it, it would have
parked it on the spaceward side!_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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