On the Trail of the Space Pirates

Pursuit of Space Pirates and Hidden Asteroid Base

Captain Steve Strong stood before Commander Walters and laid out the intelligence he had painstakingly gathered from the bartender at the Spacelanes Bar, supplemented by reports from cadets Roger and Astro. Walters, his face set with grim resolve, ordered the bartender, whose name turned out to be Joseph Price, picked up immediately and subjected to a psychograph interrogation. Meanwhile, Strong was directed to push on to Venus and seek out Nicholas Shinny, an old spacer who had once prospected the asteroids alongside the wanted man Gus Wallace. Within fifteen minutes, the freighter Dog Star blasted off from Mars, its bow aimed at the cloud-wrapped young planet.

The trip brought bad news. Price’s mind was so saturated with criminal plots and counter-plots that analysts would need weeks to extract anything useful. Worse, Wallace and Luther Simms had struck again—second, third, and fourth raids on freighters near the asteroid belt, each bolder than the last. Reaching Venusport, Strong and the three cadets made their way to a quiet suburban lane and the gleaming Titan-crystal bungalow where Nicholas Shinny spent his retired days catching Venusian fatfish and training a wolfhound puppy to retrieve. A short, barrel-chested man with a deep space tan and merry eyes, Shinny would not hear of business until his guests had been fed. He bustled around the kitchen feeding slots and punching buttons for his electronic cook, “Molly,” cackling at the cadets’ confusion.

Only after the meal did Shinny settle into his chair, pipe lit, and invite Strong to speak. The captain told him everything—the false concession at the Solar Exposition, the adjustable light-key stolen from the Time Capsule, the four pirated ships. Strong suspected Wallace had a secret hide-out somewhere in the asteroid belt, and asked Shinny if he knew where. The old spacer’s eyes grew hard. He spoke a name like a curse: Bull Coxine.

Coxine had been a Solar Guard petty officer who led a mutiny aboard Strong’s ship years ago, when Strong himself was just a young officer. Strong had put him down, and Coxine had sworn vengeance from his cell. He escaped a prison asteroid in a stolen guard’s uniform, drifted in the belt, and was picked up by a freighter collecting uranium samples. Wallace, dead-heading on that same freighter, teamed with Coxine to rob the Credit Exchange on Ganymede. Coxine was caught; Wallace vanished.

Halfway across the solar system, in a cramped shack on a hidden asteroid smothered by a swirling blanket of secondary satellites, Wallace and Simms lounged in their underwear, drinking coffee and listening to a late audio pickup from a Jovian colony. Their freighter—now bristling with two forward three-inch atomic blasters and gaping holes for two more at the stern—rested outside, masked from any outside view. Wallace had played a story spool so many times even Simms could recite it: instructions for hijacking the Time Capsule, building an adjustable light-key, and striking on the night of October twenty-ninth. They suited up, stepped through the air lock, and stepped out onto the asteroid’s surface as a Solar Guard broadcast announced that Marsopolis squadrons were hunting them near Saturn—light-years from their true position. Wallace grinned. They would hit the System on the other end while the Guard chased ghosts.

Back on the trail, Strong set course for the prison asteroid itself. After a rigorous sweep, Lieutenant Williams and his search team escorted the party through the towering defenses to Major Alan Savage, who welcomed the Polaris unit warmly. The cadets marveled at the strange prison—green grass, neat white huts, the largest atomic blaster they had ever seen crowning the central tower, and guards wielding radar-controlled paralo-ray rifles that could pinpoint any inmate wearing a metal disk. Only one man had ever escaped. His name was Coxine.

Strong and Astro drove a jet car down a paved road to Coxine’s hut. The giant criminal stood in the doorway, white coveralls stretched over a scarred and hateful frame. He refused every overture, sneering at Strong, mocking Astro, and demanding they leave. Then, without warning, atomic fire streaked down from the sky. The tower blossomed into a mushrooming cloud. As Strong and Astro wheeled in horror, Coxine seized his chance—slamming a rock against Strong’s skull and dropping the cadet with a blow to the neck. He fled in the jet car as the bombardment continued.

Inside the ruined tower, Tom and Roger scrambled for the bunkers with Major Savage, who coolly directed the desperate counterattack. Roger volunteered as radarman aboard Lieutenant Williams’ rocket destroyer and blasted off in a suicidal dive. The first defender exploded under the enemy’s guns; Williams’ ship took a near miss and drifted helplessly, but Roger was alive. From the field, Tom watched the invaders land near a cluster of huts and understood at last: this was a prison break. Pulling on a discarded white coverall from an empty hut, Tom dashed for the air lock and talked his way past a suspicious convict with a quick lie about arriving on the supply ship. Bull Coxine himself reached down from the lock, seized Tom’s hand, and hauled him up like a feather. The moment the portal slid shut, Tom knew he was aboard Wallace and Simms’ ship—and a prisoner of the most dangerous men in the system.

Strong recovered, found Astro, and raced back through the smoking ruins to a stunned Roger. Lieutenant Williams reported every prisoner gone. Strong suspected Coxine had broken the asteroid’s entry code. Then a guardsman arrived holding a familiar blue uniform—Tom’s—recovered from hut twenty-four. Strong stared at it, then at the smoke-stained sky, and quietly promised that if Tom could get a message out, the Solar Guard would answer with the largest fleet the System had ever seen.