Free Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) by Jim Laughter

to admit that the universe still held more than enough surprises unknown to him, but this was still rare. Things were just not adding up.
    When he first stumbled onto the weapons platform a couple of days ago, it got the drop on him. Although he had superior detection equipment, and had been traveling faster than the speed of light, this automated anachronism still launched a missile at him. Only the Unseen One had kept him from being destroyed.
    But it had detected him and launched well before he saw it coming. With the technology involved, that was impossible. There had to be something here he wasn’t seeing—some unknown factor that would make this add up. As it was, this situation made as much sense as saying two plus two equal five.
    First, here was an orbital weapons platform free-floating alone in space. But there was no planet. It was not orbiting anything that he could see. With a long stretch of his imagination, Ian could allow for the possibility that the platform could have drifted off into space on its own, but that went against the nature of orbital objects. Basic physics dictated that eventually an orbiting object would fall inward toward whatever it was orbiting, not break orbit and drift into space.
    The only exception would be if the object had the means to move itself to maintain its orbital position. But the platform showed no evidence of having a means of propulsion. Ian could see where some sort of booster stage had been attached to it in the distant past, but nothing current. All the attachment points showed definite signs of long disuse. The only recent evidence was where those three missiles had been slung before they were launched at him. The scrape marks were very clear.
    The trader sat and pondered his situation. Something was tickling him in the back of his mind. Something about the missiles just didn’t add up. Using the optical viewer again, he studied the missile racks on the platform.
    Magnifying the image, Ian looked at the scrape marks on the missile racks. All of the missiles had launched from the same side. Along with the scrapes, he could see burn marks from where the rocket propellant of the missiles had blasted them out of their individual holding bays.
    Ian sat the magnifier aside, trying to determine a reason for this object to be in this particular sector of space. After a couple of minutes, he flicked on his computer and started researching any information he could find about rockets. There had to be something about such primitive propulsion that was the key to this whole mess.
    He’d studied rockets as part of his trading business, and ran across them occasionally. A little knowledge always helped him make a profit. Since the advent of the bedsprings and Albert drive systems, rockets were almost extinct. There was a night and day difference between the two forms of propulsion. That made them interesting. The fact that they were rare made them profitable, at least for traders like himself.
    The brief he was seeking appeared on his screen. Ian noted that there were both liquid and solid fuel rocket motors. Of the two, solid was preferred with weapons rockets since it was simple and reliable. That was most likely the way these missiles propelled themselves out of the launch rack and toward their target. Still, that wasn’t quite what he was after.
    Scrolling further down, Ian scanned the information, still looking for a clue. He even found a section that detailed how rocket packs were used to boost other rockets and even primitive aircraft. He had a sudden flash of inspiration.
    Climbing into the control seat, Ian carefully moved the Cahill Express around behind the launch bay of the missile platform. He used the optical viewer again and studied the launch bays from a new angle. He noted that the ends of the bays were solid, so the blast of the rocket motor would push against it to propel the missile out of the rack and on its way. He could even see the scorch marks around the