Free The Secret of Saturn’s Rings by Donald A. Wollheim Page A

reached the ship, threw themselves through the airlock and slammed the door. Already Dr. Rhodes was buzzing the engines and Garcia was trying to activate the tubes. As the boys came through the lock without bothering to remove their space outfits, Jennings came from his sleeping quarters in a rush to the controls.
    Bruce opened his helmet as he ran to the control room. Once there, he found his father at the controls with the ship already off the ground. “Father,” Bruce yelled, “I know where we can take the ship. They’ll never be able to hit us.”
    As his father shot the ship over the surface, Bruce told him of the deep meteor crater on the other hemisphere. If they put the ship down there, they’d be safe until Achilles was out of range.
    Dr. Rhodes was personally flying the ship to that spot. Bruce had found their map of the surface and if they got to their hiding place in time, no cannon could reach them.
    It was really easy to operate a cannon from an asteroid. If you could line your sights, any simple artillery gun from even hundreds of years before could get enough power to break away from the weak asteroid grip and cross space to strike a visible target. Obviously the Terraluna mining camp had rigged up a cannon, knowing that Hidalgo would pass right in their sight, had awaited their chance, and bombarded the ship which they could see plainly through their telescopes. In a short while longer they’d have corrected their aim sufficiently to hit the ship and put it out of action forever.
    As Garcia and Bruce were discussing this angle, their ship was already crossing over into the side of the asteroid away from the Fore-Trojan view. Bruce noticed that Jennings was standing by the radio, apparently fiddling nervously with the microphone. He watched Jennings’ fingers tapping on the mike, and suddenly he realized that the radio sender was on, the lights lit on the dials. For an instant he was stunned.
    “Stop!” Bruce yelled and made a dash for the radio. He tried to grab the switch but Jennings made a swing for him, Bruce twisted in his grasp, slammed the power control off the radio.
    Garcia had started up in amazement. But Jennings grappled with Bruce. Then Arpad came up the corridor holding a wrench and joined the fight. Bruce was outweighed, but when Arpad raised the tool, Jennings suddenly quit, let go of the boy and stepped back, his hands raised. “O.K., O.K., cut it out. I’m through.”
    By this time Garcia had secured a pistol from their stores and held it on Jennings. “So you were the spy?” Jennings nodded. “I’m the man. You ought to listen to me. You know this trip can’t succeed. The odds are too high. If I could have stopped you, I’d probably have saved your lives.”
    “What if we’d been hit by those shells?” said Arpad. Jennings shrugged. “Even so. We’d probably just lose our air, and have to abandon ship. The Terraluna base on Achilles would have picked us up safely. They have some small ships.”
    Dr. Rhodes glanced around from the controls. “Keep him under guard until we get this ship safely landed. We’ll decide what to do with him then.”
    The ship crossed the asteroid, dropped into the deep meteor crater Bruce had discovered, and in the dark shadow of its bottom, miles beneath the surface, came to a rest.
    They held a discussion. From where they were, the Terraluna guns could never reach them. Jennings admitted that he had not had time to let the enemy cannoneers know, by tapping in code on the side of the live microphone, where they were going.
    But time was precious. In a little while, the asteroid mining ships from Achilles would be on Hidalgo itself searching for them. In time they’d be found.
    Dr. Rhodes and Garcia conferred over their charts and records. They looked up. Rhodes glanced at Arpad and Bruce, then said, “We’ve got a very serious decision to make. We will have to abandon Hidalgo and go on by our