• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He found Morgan in the ship's crew room, drinking astrobeer. Overwhelmed with a rage, which he now did nothing to conceal, Dent knocked the astrobeer can from Morgan's hand and then hit him across the face. Morgan fell to his knees.

Dent kicked him and roared, 'Get up!'

Morgan slowly got to his feet. He touched his bruised cheek. 'You've no right to hit a member of the staff' he cried, 'It's against the rules!'

Dent hit out again, and again Morgan fell to his knees. 'I'm doing this,' he said, 'instead of killing you. What happened?'

This time Morgan remained where he was, crouching on the floor. 'He smashed the robot's remote-control unit. He could have killed me!'

The door opened and Caldwell entered. When he saw Morgan grovelling on the floor in front of Dent he grinned and said, 'So, have you got the crew praying to you now, Captain?'

'Morgan has failed again,' said Dent, and briefly explained how the Doctor had walked in on his meeting with the colonists.

Caldwell listened, more amused than upset. 'I'm glad I'm only the mining engineer, and not one of you executives. Are you going to send for an Adjudicator?'

'Of course,' said Dent. 'Legality most always be maintained.'

'Meaning,' said Caldwell , 'that IMC will bribe the Adjudicator to give the right decision?'

'That remark,' said Dent, who had now thoroughly lost his self-possession, 'is slander! IMC always keeps to the law!' He knew this was totally untrue, but it was what he had been taught to say. 'I should put you both on a charge of insubordination!' The tiny two-way radio in his tunic pocket started to bleep. He pulled it out viciously, and snapped ' Yes? into its tiny microphone.

The voice was almost inaudible. ' Captain Dent? '

' Who's speaking? ' Dent shouted at the two-way radio. He held it close to his ear to hear the answer.

' Norton here, ' said the whisper of a voice, ' from the colonists' main dome. Two colonists are just about to enter the ship. '

Dent's temper faded away instantly. ' What for? ' he asked excitedly.

' It's the girl called Jo and a young man called Winton, ' continued Norton's voice. ' They're going to look for evidence against us. They want to find out about the monsters. ' The voice paused. ' Must go now, ' Norton said. ' Someone's coming... don't want to be caught. ' Norton went off the air.

Dent went into action. 'You two stay in here.'

'Why?' said Caldwell .

'For once obey an order without asking questions,' Dent said icily. 'And keep the door locked from the inside.' He left them and hurried into the connecting corridor, and thence to the control room.

A number of his technicians were there. He grabbed the microphone next to his captain's seat. ' Now hear this, ' he said, addressing everyone on the ship. ' We have visitors. I want them to be let in - so no guards at the entrance to the ship. Lock all doors to rooms. Leave the connecting corridors free of personnel. Do not, I repeat do not, interfere with our guests in any way. ' He then told the technicians in the control room to conceal themselves wherever they could - behind chairs, under the main console, behind the door. Then he waited. Five minutes later the door to the control room opened slowly and Jo looked inside.

'The whole ship's deserted,' she said, and came on in. Winton followed her.

'Where should we look for evidence?' Winton asked.

'I don't know,' said Jo. 'Maybe in here.'

Dent stood up from where he had been crouching be-hind his captain's chair. He held a gun in his hand. 'Is there anything I can do to help you?' he asked.

12 The Bomb

Jo turned to escape, but suddenly the control room of the IMC spaceship was full of IMC men who had been hiding. She and Winton had walked into a trap.

'Grab them,' ordered Dent, and the IMC men pinned the prisoners' ands behind their backs. 'Now let me explain our mining methods,' said Dent. 'We use a lot of explosive charges - bombs, if you like. These bombs are exploded by remote-control radio. A charge set ten or twenty kilometres from here can be made to explode by a touch of this