On the Trail of the Space Pirates_ A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure - Carey Rockwell [422]
Astro opened the valve on Brett's oxygen mask wide and waited until the man was breathing normally. Then he began feeling his way back to the ladder. Suddenly he heard a sound that made his blood run cold. It was the unmistakable whine of the cooling pumps building for blast-off. And he was directly underneath the exhaust tubes.
He scrambled away, heading back to the spot where Brett lay. The whining of the pumps built to an agonizing scream. There were scant seconds left to save himself. He could not wait to find Brett. He began running wildly away from the ship, stumbling, failing, rising to his feet again to plunge on, away from the deadly white-hot exhaust blast of the Space Knight.
There was a terrific explosion, and then Astro was lifted off his feet and hurled through the mist, head over heels. He screamed and then blacked out.
* * * * *
"We found him about a thousand yards away from the warehouse, Commander," said the guardsman. "He looks pretty beat and his clothes are burned a little. I think he must have been caught in the blast of that ship we heard take off."
Walters looked down at Astro's big frame, sprawled on the ground, and then at the medical corpsman who was giving him a quick examination. The corpsman straightened up and turned to Walters and Captain Strong. "He'll be all right as soon as he wakes up."
"Shock?" asked Strong.
"Yes. And complete fatigue. Look at his hands and knees. He's been doing some pretty rough work." The corpsman indicated the big cadet's hands, skinned and swollen from his labor in the mines.
"Wake him up!" growled Walters.
"Wake him up!" exclaimed the corpsman. "Why, sir, I couldn't allow—"
"Wake him up. And that's an order!" insisted Walters.
"Very well, sir. But this will have to go into my report to the senior medical officer."
"And I'll commend you for insisting on proper care for your patients," Walters stated. "But in the meantime we've got to find out what happened. And Cadet Astro is the only one who can tell us."
The corpsman turned to his emergency kit. He took out a large hypodermic needle, filled with a clear fluid, and injected it into the big cadet's arm.
In less than a minute Astro was sitting up and telling Walters everything that had happened. When he told of the pipe that was sucking off the oxygen from the main pumps, Walters dispatched an emergency crew to the mine immediately to plug the leak. Then, when Astro revealed the secret of the mine, the presence of the uranium pitchblende, Walters shook his head slowly.
"Amazing!" he exclaimed. "Greed can ruin a man. He could have declared such a discovery and still had more money than he could have spent in a lifetime."
Walters spun around. "Steve, I want the Polaris ready to blast off within an hour. We're going after one of the dirtiest space rats that ever hit the deep!"
CHAPTER 18
Roger peered around the edge of the baffling shields. The power deck was empty. He edged out and stood upright, eyes moving constantly for signs of Miles.
No longer needing the cumbersome space suit, he stripped it off and walked across the deck to the ladder. He stopped to listen again but there was only the sound of the rockets under emergency space drive. A quick glance at the control panel told him that the ship was hurtling through space at a fantastic speed. Satisfied that Miles was nowhere near, Roger gripped the rocketman's wrench tightly and began climbing slowly and cautiously.
When he reached the next deck, he raised his head through the hatch slowly. Then, in one quick movement, he pulled himself up on the deck and ran for cover behind a small locker to