The lock surrendered in a trickle of white-hot slag and Pop felt himself sink low. There was still that one shot left for him—and he wasn't needed now.
The door swung open and Carnavon knelt to rifle the vault. When he at last straightened, he held a pool of jagged blue fire in his gloved hand. The gems sparkled with a life of their own—two dozen faceted beauties—each worth a king's ransom—and each bought with a man's life.
Presently they stood again on the outer hull, under an unreal canopy of stars. Nearby, a ghastly satellite was swinging inward toward the ship. Pop stared at it and back to Carnavon. He began to understand what the wrecker planned. He was going to leave him here—on the wreck. And he would die here. He understood that the shot that remained in the blaster wasn't for him after all. Carnavon wasn't going to waste it on him. There was a spanner in the wrecker's hand and he now advanced purposefully toward Pop Wills.
Pop stepped backwards, retreating from the heavy figure of the wrecker. Fear was surging in waves through him—fear mixed with blind hate and contempt for himself and his senile weakness. Overhead, against the stars, the awful satellite drew nearer.
Carnavon reduced the power in his magnetic shoes and moved lightly toward Pop, the spanner raised to strike. The old man stumbled against a long shard of steel on the hull that floated upward at his touch. Fear paralyzed him, and he stood now, waiting for the blow of the spanner that would smash his helmet and leave him a distended corpse spinning through space. Above him, the satellite spun inward.
Pop glanced up—into the agonized, dead face of a twelve-year-old boy. He shrieked. The sound deafened him in the bubble of his helmet. All the fear and weakness turned to a bitter hate and surged forward in one insane motion toward his tormentor. The long shard of steel came to hand like a lance. The rusted, warped old watch spring that was Pop Wills recoiled and unwound in one raging moment. He charged Carnavon.
Carnavon evaded the clumsy charge instinctively. With an almost unconscious motion, he raised the blaster and fired point-blank.
