• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"You're in charge of the party. I want you to do one thing, and one thing only! Take the largest ships on the spaceport and blast off. Don't touch anything else! Just the ships. Those you can't get off the ground, leave. We'll blast them later!"

"Aye, aye, sir."

Coxine strode over to the teleceiver. Immediately the image of a man in the uniform of a Solar Guard major appeared on the screen. His voice echoed in the control room.

"Hello, Coxine! This is Major Sommers! Come in, Coxine!"

"Yeah—" replied Coxine. "Whaddya want?" The pirate captain stepped arrogantly in front of the teleceiver's transmitting lens, and from the look on the officer's face, Tom knew he had seen Coxine on his own screen.

"We've followed orders," said the major. "Our only request is that you do not harm any of the citizens—"

Coxine cut him off. "Stow that space gas! I'll do what I please! I'm sending down a crew of men. They have certain orders. Any interference from you and I'll open fire with everything I've got—right in the middle of the spaceport."

Tom gasped. The spaceport was now crowded with the citizens of the tiny colony.

The major nodded gravely. "I understand," he said. "You may rest assured no one will interfere with your men!"

"Huh!" sneered Coxine. "You don't sound so high and mighty now that you're staring into the barrels of a dozen atomic blasters!" He snapped off the teleceiver and roared with laughter.

Tom felt a shiver run down his spine. He could imagine the frustration of the Ganymede garrison, a crack crew of fighting men, forced to surrender without firing a shot. And he had been the cause by giving Coxine the code recognition signal!

Coxine snapped an order into the intercom and a moment later Tom saw the jet boats on the scanner, rocketing down to the surface of the small satellite.

As, one by one, the small ships landed on the spaceport, the three cadets could see the crowds of colonists fan out, allowing the jet boats to come in without interference.

Coxine strode up and down the control deck restlessly, but keeping his eyes on the activity below. Suddenly he rushed to the scanner, stared hard, and then let out a roar of triumph.

The three cadets saw the reason immediately. On the scanner were the unmistakable outlines of two Solar Guard heavy cruisers, four destroyers, and six scouts, hurtling spaceward at tremendous speed. Coxine spun around, balled his fists into tight knots, and shook them at the three cadets.

"I've won! I've won!" He roared with insane laughter and there was a crazed gleam in his eyes. "I've got the ships, the guns, the men, and the secret of the adjustable light-key. By the time I'm finished with the Solar Guard there won't be anything left of those crawlers but what you can hear on a story spool, and the Solar Alliance will be run by one man!" He paused, his face grew hard and he tapped his chest menacingly. "Me!"

CHAPTER 20

"I don't care if the blasted ship blows up!" roared Captain Strong to the power-deck officer of the Solar Guard rocket cruiser Arcturus. "I want every ounce of thrust you can get out of this space heap!"

The young Solar Guard captain turned back to the loud-speaker of the audioceiver, turned the volume dial a fraction, and listened. The steady pronounced ping of Roger's signal beacon filled his ears.

When Strong discovered that Coxine had outwitted him, he had gone aboard the rocket cruiser Arcturus of Squadron Ten and had continued on search patrol. He dared not break audio silence to warn the cadets aboard the Polaris, lest he give away the position of the ship. Later, when the radar officer of the Arcturus reported a steady signal over the audioceiver, Strong at first dismissed it as some form of interference from space. But when Titan failed to report the arrival of the Polaris on time, Strong investigated the strange sound. Taking a bearing on the signal, he discovered it came from a position dangerously close to the small Jovian colony of Ganymede. After repeated attempts to raise the Polaris failed, and