On the Trail of the Space Pirates | Page 8

said Strong, grinning sheepishly. "You've got yourself a speechmaker!"
"Good!" said Hawks and the two men shook hands.
Tom Corbett could contain himself no longer. "Congratulations, sir!" he blurted out as the three cadets stood up. "We think Commissioner Hawks couldn't have made a better choice!" His unit-mates nodded a vigorous assent.
Strong shook hands with the cadets and thanked them.
"You want the cadets for anything right now, Mike?" asked Strong.
"Not a thing, Steve."
Strong turned back to the boys. "Better hop out to the spaceport and get the Polaris over the exposition site, cadets. Soon as you set her down, clean her up a little, then relax. I'll be at the Galaxy Hotel if you need me."
"Yes, sir," said Tom.
The cadets saluted sharply and left the office.
Arriving at the spaceport, they found the Polaris stripped of her guns and her galley stocked with food. The chief petty officer in charge of the enlisted spacemen detail was roving through the passageways of the rocket cruiser when Tom found him.
"Everything set, chief?" asked Tom.
"All set, Cadet Corbett," reported the elderly spaceman, saluting smartly. He gave Tom a receipt for the list of the equipment that had been removed from the ship and signed the logbook. Tom thanked him and made a hurried check of the control deck, with Roger and Astro reporting from the radar and power decks. With the precision and assurance of veteran spacemen, the three Space Cadets lifted the great ship up over the heart of the sprawling Venusian city and brought it down gently in the clearing provided for it at the exposition site, a grassy square surrounded on three sides by buildings of shimmering crystal walls.
No sooner had the giant ship settled itself to the ground, than a crew of exposition workers began laying a slidewalk toward her, while another crew began the construction of an aluminum staircase to the entrance port in her giant fin.
Almost before they realized it, Tom, Roger, and Astro found themselves busy with a hundred little things concerning the ship and their part in the fair. They were visited by the subcommissioner of the exposition and advised of the conveniences provided for the participants of the fair. Then, finally, as a last worker finished the installation of a photoelectric cell across the entrance port to count visitors to the ship, Tom, Roger, and Astro began the dirty job of washing down the giant titanium hull with a special cleaning fluid, while all around them the activity of the fair buzzed with nervous excitement.
Suddenly the three cadets heard the unmistakable roar of jets in the sky. Automatically, they looked up and saw a spaceship, nose up, decelerating as it came in for a touchdown on a clearing across one of the wide spacious streets of the fairgrounds.
"Well, blast my jets!" exclaimed Astro, his eyes clinging to the flaming exhausts as the ship lowered itself to the ground.
"That craft must be at least fifty years old!"
"I've got a rocket-blasting good idea, Tom," said Roger.
The exit port of the spaceship opened, and the three cadets watched Gus Wallace and Luther Simms climb down the ladder.
"Hey," yelled Roger, "better be careful with that broken-down old boiler. It might blow up!"
The two men glared at the grinning Roger but didn't answer.
"Take it easy, Roger," cautioned Tom. "We don't want to start anything that might cause us and Captain Strong trouble before the fair even opens. So let's leave them alone."
"What are you afraid of?" drawled Roger, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "Just a little fun with those guys won't hurt." He stepped to the side of the clearing and leaned over the fence separating the two areas.
"Tell me something, spaceman," he yelled to Wallace, who was busy with some gear at the base of the ship, "you don't expect people to pay to ride that thing, do you?" He smiled derisively and added, "Got insurance to cover the families?"
"Listen, punk!" sneered Wallace, "get back over to your Solar Guard space toy and keep your trap shut!"
"Now--now--" jeered Roger, "mustn't get nasty. Remember, we're going to be neighbors. Never can tell when you might want to borrow some baling wire or chewing gum to keep your craft together!"
"Look, wise guy, one more crack out of you, and I'll send you out of this world without a spaceship!" snarled Wallace through grating teeth.
"Any time you'd like to try that, you know where I am," Roger snapped back.
"Okay, punk! You asked for it," yelled Wallace. He had been holding a length of chain and now he swung it at Roger. The cadet ducked easily, hopped over the fence, and before Wallace knew what was happening, jolted him with three straight lefts and a sharp right cross. Wallace went down in a heap, out cold.
Luther Simms, who had been watching the affair from