“Doc. Doc. It’s me, Red. You still kicking?”
Ward listened for a long time before he finally heard a voice resembling his. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“I finally found the subsonic generator and reversed it. Have to do it that way, gradually, or the shock kills you. Took quite a while. I hid the cage down in the cargo hanger, and I stay down there and guarded it most of the time. They’ve searched almost everywhere, but I keep moving it from place to place. If you want to know how I got in good with the duty watch down there, it cost me a hundred platinum credits. And don’t ask me how I got the credits. You sure you’re all right now?”
“Guess so. Little weak. What are you going to do now?”
“This is the climax of the ‘Hounds of the Void’ picture,” said Red. “The hero is going to get you out of here. I’m going to wreck the Sol. In the confusion we can escape.”
“Wreck the—!” Ward subsided in the darkness, resigned.
“It’s simple, Doc. I’m going to destroy the forward fuel-injectors. The braking rockets won’t work then, and everybody aboard will have to bail out in air-sleds. They’ll never notice us in all the bedlam. We hope.”
“But the cage of mercenaries...?”
“Take that along in an air-sled. We won’t be the only ones that’ll grab up some excess luggage.”
“But Red,” whispered Ward. “You can’t do that until we get inside Mars gravity. By that time the Executive Officer will start working on me again. I couldn’t stand another dosage, Red.”