“Mind if I spit in his eye, Doc?” Morrie said conversationally.
“Don’t waste it,” Cargraves counseled. “Let’s see if we can think ourselves out of this mess. Any suggestions?” He hauled the prisoner out of the chair and made him lie face down on the deck. Then he sat down on him. “Go right ahead,” he urged. “I don’t think he understands two words of English. How about it, Ross?”
“Well,” Ross answered, “it’s more than just saving our necks now. We’ve got to stop them. But the notion of tackling fifty men with two rifles and two pistols sounds like a job for Tarzan or Superman. Frankly, I don’t know how to start.”
“Maybe we can start by scouting them out. Thirteen miles isn’t much. Not on the moon.”
“Look,” said Art, “in a day or two I might have a transmitter rigged that would raise earth. What we need is reinforcements.”
“How are they going to get here?” Ross wanted to know. “We had the only space ship — except for the Nazis.”
“Yes, but listen — Doc’s plans are still available. You left full notes with Ross’s father — didn’t you, Doc? They can get busy and rebuild some more and come up here and blast those skunks out.”
“That might be best,” Cargraves answered. “We can’t afford to miss, that’s sure. They could raid the earth base of the Nazis first thing and then probably bust this up in a few weeks, knowing that our ship did work and having our plans.”
Morrie shook his head. “It’s all wrong. We’ve got to get at them right now. No delay at all, just the way they smashed us. Suppose it takes the UN six weeks to get there. Six weeks might be too long. Three weeks might be too long. A week might be too long. An atom war could be all over in a day.”
“Well, let’s ask our pal if he knows when they expect to strike, then,” Ross offered.
Morrie shook his head and stopped Art from doing so. “Useless. We’ll never get a chance to build a transmitter. They’ll be swarming over this crater like reporters around a murder trial. Look — they’ll be here any minute. Don’t you think they’ll miss this rocket?”
“Oh, my gosh!” It was Art. Ross added, “What time is it, Doc?”
To their complete amazement it was only forty minutes from the time the Galileo had been bombed. It had seemed like a full day.
It cheered them up a little but not much. The prisoner had admitted that the rocket they were in was the only utility, short-jump job. And the Nazi space ship- the Wotan, he termed it -would hardly be used for search. Perhaps they had a few relatively free hours.
“But I still don’t see it,” Cargraves admitted. “Two guns and two pistols — four of us. The odds are too long — and we can’t afford to lose. I know you sports aren’t afraid to die, but we’ve got to win.”
“Why,” inquired Ross, “does it have to be rifles?”
“What else?”
“This crate bombed us. I’ll bet it carries more than one bomb.”
Cargraves looked startled, then turning to the prisoner, spoke rapidly in German. The prisoner gave a short reply. Cargraves nodded and said, “Morrie, do you think you could fly this clunker?”
“I could sure make a stab at it.”
“Okay. You are it. We’ll make Joe Master Race here take it off, with a gun in his ribs, and you’ll have to feel her out. You won’t get but one chance and no practice. Now let’s take a look at the bomb controls.”
The bomb controls were simple. There was no bombsight, as such. The pilot drove the ship on a straight diving course and kicked it out just before his blast upwards. There was a gadget to expel the bomb free of the ship; it continued on the ship’s previous trajectory. Having doped it out, they checked with the Nazi pilot who gave them the same answers they had read in the mechanism.
There were two pilot seats and two passenger seats, directly behind the pilot seats. Morrie took one pilot seat; the Nazi the other. Ross sat behind Morrie, while Cargraves sat with Art in his lap, one belt around both. This squeezed Art up close to the back of the Nazi’s chair, which was good, for Art reached around and held a gun in the Nazi’s side.