Chapter 12: Coxine Asserts Command & Tom’s First Aboard Test
Bull Coxine stood on the control deck of his stolen ship, no longer wearing the white prison coverall but a snug black merchant spaceman’s uniform, two paralo-ray pistol belts crisscrossed over his massive hips. He leaned into the intercom microphone and roared, “Stand by, you space crawlers!” but the prisoners below only laughed and sang louder, drunk on their sudden freedom. Coxine’s eyes narrowed. “Avast there! Stow that noise!” he bellowed, and when the men gradually quieted, he laid down the law with an ominous whisper: any troublemaker would take a swim in space. He reminded them he had cut his milk teeth on mutiny, that he needed a crew and nothing more. After a chorus of cheers, he announced his command structure—Gus Wallace as lieutenant, Luther Simms as lieutenant—and assigned departmental posts to the celebrating men.
But when Wallace and Simms came forward grinning like co-conspirators, Coxine shut them down cold. He reminded them that two and a half years of scheming on the prison asteroid had been his doing alone—the spaceship, the light-key, the smuggled story spools. Wallace whined, but Coxine silenced him with a reminder that he alone was the brains of the outfit. The lieutenants slunk away to plot a course to their hide-out asteroid, cursing the giant spaceman under their breath.
Below decks, in a cargo compartment converted into sleeping quarters, the prisoners drank rocket juice—a foul mix of fruit, alcohol, and reactor priming fluid—while stripping off their prison whites. One short, ape-shouldered man covered in black hair stood on a table boasting of his strength, and the men cheered him on with the nickname “Monkey.” When a prisoner called the name and then ducked behind a bunk, Monkey rounded on Tom Corbett, who had been sitting quietly in the corner trying to stay invisible.
Tom had been aboard since the blast-off, hoping to plant a signal for the Solar Guard before Wallace and Simms discovered him. But Monkey wouldn’t be put off. The hairy brute leapt, and Tom caught him in the stomach with both feet, sending him sprawling against the bulkhead. The prisoners roared. Monkey charged again, locking his powerful arms around Tom in a crushing grip that made the cadet’s ribs creak. Fighting back with desperate strength, Tom pushed the man’s chin up until the grip slackened, then burst free and swung a final punch to Monkey’s jaw. The bone crunched, and the ape-man crumpled, unconscious. To Tom’s relief, the crew cheered the winner rather than asking questions. Someone shoved a cup of rocket juice into his hands.
Recovering in the corridor, Tom made his way toward the radar bridge but was confronted by Coxine himself. With his heart racing, Tom spun a tale: he was the “Space Kid,” a Solar Guard gunner who had beaten his officer senseless and been sent to the Rock. To prove his worth, he bragged that he could take the space tan off a crawler’s nose at a hundred thousand yards. Coxine’s eyes sharpened—the kid had let slip that six-inch blasters only mounted on Solar Guard heavy cruisers—but Tom covered smoothly, claiming enlisted service. The pirate captain was impressed enough to assign him second-in-command of the gunnery crew.
Back at Space Academy, Captain Strong organized a systematic sweep of the asteroid belt with search squadrons, convinced Tom was aboard Coxine’s ship and would find a way to signal. Roger Manning manned the radar bridge while Astro prepared the Polaris for blast-off. Strong was right to worry: aboard the newly renamed Avenger, Coxine had spotted a Mars-to-Venus jet liner on the scanner and ordered all hands to attack stations.
Tom, assigned to the forward turret, deliberately placed his warning shot across the liner’s bow rather than hitting her. Then Coxine ordered him to blast away the ship’s audio antenna—a needle-thin target at fifty thousand yards. Tom calculated angles three times, fired, and severed the cable cleanly, earning Coxine’s astonished praise. The pirate captain took the Space Kid along in his own boarding boat, leaving Wallace to handle the cargo holds aft.
On the passenger ship’s control deck, Coxine produced a thin titanium rod and opened the vault with practiced ease, stuffing credit notes and valuables into a bag before tossing the outraged captain a mocking salute. The boarding party returned to the Avenger without incident, and Coxine divided the haul at a long mess table, knocking one protesting crewman cold with a single punch when he complained about his share.
Knowing his name would be called next, Tom slipped out of the messroom with the paralo-ray pistol he had stolen earlier and raced to the radar bridge. He locked the duty operator in a locker, pried open the scanner casing, and began tapping out a desperate Morse message on the exposed wires: emergency, attention, Corbett, Space Cadet, aboard Coxine pirate ship, space quadrant B, section twenty-three.
On the Polaris, Roger caught the flashing static on his own scanner and shrieked the news to Strong. The Solar Guard captain plotted a course and ordered Astro to pour on the neutrons, the great ship leaping through the void toward Tom’s coordinates.
Back aboard the Avenger, Tom secured the wires to create continuous interference, jamming their radar, then fled to the jet-boat deck. He froze the scar-faced Attardi with a paralo-ray blast, slid open the hull, and rocketed away in a small craft. His triumph curdled when he checked the gauges: the boat had not been refueled after the raid. Less than three days of oxygen remained in the tanks.
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