On the Trail of the Space Pirates_ A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure - Carey Rockwell [480]
The men were silent.
"Double wages and a bonus!"
Silence.
"All right! Beat it!" he growled. "Don't ever show your faces around here again!"
Connel turned to Professor Hemmingwell. "I'll see if I can't muster a crew from the ranks of the Solar Guard," he said.
"Major," said the professor, his face worn and haggard from the long ordeal of completing the project, "I wouldn't want men ordered to man this vessel."
"They're in the Solar Guard and they take orders," said Connel.
"No," persisted Hemmingwell. "I will not let a man on that ship that does not want to go. Remember, Major, it is still my personal property."
"All right," said Connel grimly. "I'll see if I can recruit a crew from the civilian workers around the Academy."
But Major Connel encountered the same superstitious dread everywhere. The word had spread that the projectile ship was jinxed. Old tales of other ships that had gone out into space, never to be heard of again, were recalled, and the men found instances of similar prelaunching happenings on the projectile ship. Very little of it was true, of course. The stories were half-truths and legends that had been handed down through generations of spacemen, but they seemed to have special significance now.
Connel fumed and ranted, threatened and cajoled, begged and pleaded, but it was no use. There was not a man in the Academy who would set foot inside the "jinxed" ship. Finally, in a last desperate attempt, he ignored Hemmingwell's order and appealed to Commander Walters.
"No, Lou. I cannot order men to take that ship up," Commander Walters replied, "and you know it!"
"Why not?" argued Connel. "You're the commander, aren't you?"
"I most certainly am," asserted Walters, "and if I want to get other things done in the Solar Guard, I can't order men to take a jinxed ship off the ground." He looked at Connel narrowly. "Do you remember the old freighter, the Spaceglow?" he asked.
Connel frowned but didn't reply.
"You were mate on that ship before you enlisted in the Solar Guard," persisted Walters. "And I read the log of your first trip when you wrote, and I quote, 'There seems to be some mysterious and unanswerable condition aboard this vessel that makes her behave as if she had human intelligence…'"
"That has nothing to do with this situation!" roared Connel.
"They're alike! You couldn't get a crew on that wagon in any port of call from Venus to Jupiter!"
"But we found out what was wrong with her eventually!"
"Yes, but the legend still exists that the Spaceglow had intelligence of its own!" asserted Walters.
"All right," snorted Connel. "So we have to fight superstition! But, blast it, Commander, we're faced with a saboteur. There's nothing supernatural or mysterious about a man with a bomb!"
Connel turned abruptly and walked out of the commander's office, more furious than Walters had ever seen him.
Back at the hangar, Connel faced the professor. It was a tough thing to tell the elderly man, and Connel, for all his hard exterior, could easily appreciate the professor's feelings. After many years of struggle to convince die-hard bankers of the soundness of his Space Projectile plan, followed by sabotage and costly work stoppages, it was heart-rending to have a "jinx" finally stop him.
"I'm sorry," said Connel, "but that's the way things are, Professor."
"I understand, Major," replied Hemmingwell wearily. He turned away, shoulders slumping, and walked back to his tiny office in the shadow of the mighty ship that was anchored on the ground.
"May I speak to you a moment, Major?" a voice broke the silence in the hangar.
Connel turned around slowly. "You!" he exclaimed. "If it hadn't been for you and your big mouth, this ship might be in space right now!"
"Stop blowing your jets!" snapped Dave Barret. "I want to see this ship in space as badly as you do. Perhaps even more so. But listen, I'm not afraid of the jinx. Neither are you, nor