Wreck Off Triton

It's hard to say in mere words what old Pop must have felt when he picked up the wreck of the Thunderbird on the radar. He recognized the image, of course. The Thunderbird was unique among spacers. Then he checked her position against the chart that Carnavon had marked and realized why they had come. He realized too who this John Smith was, and hate pulsed through him in sickening waves. Pop wasn't a brave man, and he was past his prime, but he could still hate.

Almost without conscious thought, Pop broke out the Ultra-Wave and began calling the Guard. He broadcast full particulars, co-ordinates, descriptions, everything. He was at it when Carnavon found him and sent him crashing against the control panels with a smashing overhand right to the mouth.

Pop sprawled on the metal decking and watched the wrecker carefully smash every communicating device on the ship's panel. There was a throbbing pain in his head where he had struck the shabbily padded control console, and the thick taste of blood was in his bruised mouth. He watched Carnavon like an animal, a hurt, impotently raging beast. And he began to be afraid. Even his hate couldn't spare him that, for Pop was afraid to die and he knew just what his chances were now.

Carnavon, on the other hand, didn't waste time hating. He didn't know why Pop had called copper, and he didn't really care. Pop wasn't important. The sapphires in the Thunderbird's vault. They were important. He'd come too far to abandon them now.

It would take nine minutes for Pop's radio appeal to reach the nearest Guard base, Carnavon calculated. And it would take six hours for the fastest Guard ship to reach them after that. He could board the Thunderbird and loot her in not more than two hours. That would still give the Carefree a four hour start on the Guard, and in deep space four hours were as good as four thousand. Carnavon still wasn't worried. The wrecking of the Thunderbird had been the work of months, and he wasn't going to panic now. Ron Carnavon wasn't that sort of a criminal.

Blaster in hand, he motioned Pop to his feet. He wondered vaguely just why the old man had taken such a chance. He couldn't have any notions of collecting the reward for Carnavon. The amount was less than the amount he was getting for doing this--Carnavon smiled bleakly--salvage job. And the old man was a coward. He could see it in the trembling of the blue-veined hands, in the shifting faintness of the watery blue eyes. The wrecker shrugged aside the thoughts as unimportant and set to work.

With a blaster in his ribs, Pop Wills did as he was told. He braked the Carefree to a stop twenty miles from the ruptured hulk of the liner. There were beads of sweat standing out on Pop's forehead and his hands shook on the firing console. A thin trickle of dark blood marred his stubbled chin. His battered lips were unsteady.

For a few bad moments, Pop Wills thought Carnavon was going to blast him as soon as the Carefree lost way, but then even his gin-soaked mind began to understand that the end wasn't quite yet. Carnavon needed help looting the murdered liner. If he was going to lay his hands on her valuables before the Guard appeared, he'd have to get Pop working with him. Maybe if Pop had been more of a man he could have stopped the wrecker cold right there, but long years of boozing had left Pop weak. He could hate well enough, but fear conquers even hate. And that blaster that followed him in every movement made Pop's thin blood run cold. Life--even a life like Pop Wills'--was better than the black void of death. Pop was ready to buy a few more minutes of life at almost any price, even from the man who had killed his boy. The old man was like a rusty watch-spring--battered and wound to the utmost limit. And jammed there. Frozen by the reality of that ugly blaster and the cold eyes behind it, Pop would help Carnavon. He couldn't help himself. And his hate expanded to include his own senile weakness....

The Thunderbird spun slowly in the light of the faraway sun, the rent in her hull gaping like a mouthful of jagged teeth. She had been a beautiful thing once, but she was ugly now in death. She had not died gracefully. Her back had been broken and her innards scattered. She orbited sullenly, and around her spun the broken fragments of her inner body--the bloated, frozen corpses of the men she'd carried. Against the backdrop of the stars and the blaze of the Milky Way, she seemed to be a blot on the heavens. Pop Wills and Ron Carnavon watched her, each of them with his own thoughts. Then the wrecker motioned toward the suit lockers with his blaster.

It took a bit of doing to get into his own pressure suit and still keep the blaster pointed at Wills, but Carnavon was a large man, and supple, and he managed it well enough.

The Carefree had no escape boat, so there was nothing for it but to rely on the suit motors to take them across to the Thunderbird. It promised to be slow going, for the suit motors were weak and produced only one tenth G of thrust. Almost anything thrown out ahead by a man in a space-suit was enough to stop him cold. The recoil overcame the suit motor with ridiculous ease and though the motor labored mightily, it would take a long while to reestablish the original direction of movement. But Carnavon had an answer for that, too.

A quick check of the radar showed that there were still no Guard ships within hailing distance. Carnavon's original estimate of the time it would take the Space Guard to arrive on the scene turned out to be surprisingly accurate.

He connected his suit to Pop's with a short cable and snap-hooks and together they made their way to the Carefree's dorsal valve.

Carnavon had no intention of sweating out a long, slow crossing to the hulk, so he ran the lock pressure up high and waited until the outer hatch was lined up with the derelict liner. Then with a sudden movement, he spun the wheel and popped the outer portal. Pop and Carnavon shot into space like grotesque bolas. The Thunderbird loomed up ahead.

Pop kept his mouth shut and his eyes open. He saw more than an old man might be expected to see, too. For instance he saw that Carnavon--cautious though he might be--had neglected to take an extra magazine for his blaster. That meant that there were just three shots in the weapon. One of which, Pop figured, would be used against the vault of the scuttled liner. Not that the old man was making any plans. He was still too weighted by his fear and his sense of impotence for that. He merely noticed, and prayed to the gods of space that one of those shots in the blaster might not be meant for him.