Obviously puzzled, Deveet strode up and down the cabin, knocking out its six windows with the handhooks of his spacesuit. Jonner maneuvered the plane gently, and set it on automatic. He got out of the pilot's seat and strode to the right front port.
Reaching through the broken window, he pulled in a section of cable that was trailing alongside. While the baffled Deveet watched, he reeled it in until he brought up the end of it, to which was attached a fish-shaped finned metal missile.
Jonner carried the cable end and the attached missile across the cabin and tossed it out the broken front port on the other side, swinging it so that the 700-mile-an-hour slipstream snapped it back in through the rearmost port like a bullet.
"Pick it up and pass it out the right rear port," he commanded. "We'll have to pass it to each other from port to port. The slipstream won't let us swing it forward and through."
In a few moments, the two of them had worked the missile and the cable end to the right front port and in through it. Originating above the plane, it now made a loop through the four open ports. Jonner untied the missile and tied the end to the portion which came into the cabin, making a bowline knot of the loop. Deveet picked up the missile from the floor, where Jonner had thrown it.
"Looks like a spent rocket shell," he commented.
"It's a signal rocket," said Jonner. "The flare trigger was disconnected."
He picked up the microphone and called the Radiant Hope on Phobos.
"We've hooked our fish, Qoqol," he told the Martian, and laid the mike aside.
"What does that mean?" asked Deveet.