“You little brat!” Frieda’s face flamed red with anger.
Struggling to her feet, she lunged at Sandy. Phyl promptly repeated her friend’s tactic and the woman went down again. At that same moment Bud sent her husband reeling from a stiff upper-cut.
Tom, meanwhile, was driving savage punches to his opponent’s midriff.
Painfully winded, the
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gray-haired man sagged against the wall of the cabin-then slumped to the ground as Tom finally wrenched the gun from his grasp.
As Nick prepared to charge Bud again, the young inventor cried, “Hold it!”
The scar-faced pilot glared in helpless rage as he saw the automatic Tom was holding. One of Nick’s eyes was swollen and beginning to turn black and blue.
“Too bad you got that gun so soon, Tom,” Bud said. “Boy, how I’d love to give this bird another shiner!”
Tom ordered the three kidnappers to face the wall of the shack. “With your hands up!” he added sharply.
Bud untied Phyl and Sandy, then used the same ropes, together with some lengths of tough vine, to bind the prisoners’ wrists. The girls felt weak with relief.
“How did you ever find us?” Sandy asked.
“Your radio silence worried us, so I finally tried the space prober,” Tom explained.
“The space prober!” Sandy gasped. “Oh, thank goodness! We never even thought of that!”
“The sheathing on your Pigeon Special blinds radar, but luckily it doesn’t stop the prober from getting a picture with radio waves. Anyhow,” Tom went on, “we finally spotted your ship but you two weren’t in it. Then we discovered it was 100 THE ASTEROID PIRATES