On the Trail of the Space Pirates_ A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure - Carey Rockwell [290]
"Get up!" snarled Bush. He poked the gun within an inch of Tom's face. The cadet knew that if Bush fired at such a close range, his brains would be burned to a crisp. He fell away from the gun.
"I wrenched my knee," he whined. "I can't get up!"
"If you don't get up by the time I count three," growled Bush, "I'll blast you! One, two—"
The roar of the jets was closer now and Tom's heart began to race. Feigning pain in his leg, he started to pull himself to his feet. He glanced toward the spaceport entrance and saw a stream of jet cars pouring into the field, heading for the Polaris. Suddenly Tom leaped for Bush from the crouching position. He lashed out with his right fist, while grabbing for the ray gun with his left.
Bush was not to be tricked so easily. He fired just as the cadet jumped. But in trying to evade Tom's crashing right hand, he missed his shot and was grazed by Tom's fist. He fell back out of the spaceship, his gun falling inside the air-lock portal.
Tom lay on the deck, wincing in pain. The wild shot had caught him in the right leg and he was unable to move it. He crawled across the deck, reaching for the gun as Bush came charging up the ramp.
Meanwhile, Vidac, seeing the commotion in the hatch of the spaceship, pulled his gun and leveled it at Tom. But Bush charged through the hatch just as Vidac fired and he caught the full blast of Vidac's shot. He landed on the deck beside Tom, stiff as a board.
Tom reached for the gun, preparing to fight it out with Vidac. But the odds were against him. His leg was completely paralyzed and Vidac was climbing into the ship. He knew he couldn't reach the gun in time.
Suddenly Vidac became aware of the jet cars streaming into the spaceport. He stopped and turned to look at them. Then, sensing something was wrong, he turned back to dash into the Polaris. The second his back was turned was sufficient time for Tom to grab the gun and fire. Vidac was stopped cold, his bright eyes burning with hate, unable to move.
"You can drop that now," said a voice in back of Tom.
The curly-haired cadet whirled around to face Governor Hardy, holding a paralo-ray rifle up to his shoulder, aimed and ready to fire.
"You're a good spaceman, Corbett," said Hardy in a cold, harsh voice, "but this is the last time you'll ever get into my hair!"
Tom's leg prevented him from moving and he had turned in an awkward sitting position to face Hardy. All he could do was bring his gun up quickly and fire over his left shoulder. Hardy fired at the same instant. At such close range neither could miss.
When Captain Strong and the colonists dashed into the ship they found two perfect statues.
CHAPTER 21
"And you kept giving Hardy wrong information?" asked Strong with a laugh.
"Yes!" snorted Professor Sykes with a wry grin. "You see, I knew right away Vidac was doing something funny way back—" He paused to sip his tea. "Way back before we landed on Roald." He grinned broadly at the people seated around the table in the dining room of the Logan house, Roger, Astro, Jeff, Tom, Jane, Billy, Hyram, and Strong.
After Strong had released the Space Cadets from the effects of the paralo rays, they had searched the Polaris and found the professor locked in one of the cabins. Placing Vidac and Hardy under arrest and confining them in the brig of the ship with Winters and Bush, they had returned to the Logan farm to clear a few of the mysteries surrounding the nightmare of violence since their landing on Roald.
"When Vidac and Hardy refused to let me go down and make an inspection of the satellite after the instruments conked out, I knew there was something fishy," Sykes continued. "Any fool could have seen that radio-activity would be the only thing to cause an instrument disturbance like that!"
"Then Vidac and Hardy knew about the uranium?" asked Strong. "We only discovered it at Space Academy ourselves a little while ago."
"They knew about it all right," asserted Sykes.