I led the way into the lock, with Stony and several of his lads at my heels. In a minute the lock clicked and I opened the door and stepped outside. The sun was only a couple of degrees high and the long shadows of the blister and the ship lay sharp and dark across the gray-white terrain. The stars burned against the black sky, very remote and indifferent. I tried to swallow the dryness in my mouth and throat, but it wouldn't go down.
A nudge from the muzzle of a blaster brought me back to the business in hand. I set off across the rocks, taking it as easy as I could without making my convoy too impatient. I headed straight for the Aspera. No need stalling now. Either Betty had had time to hide herself by now or it didn't matter.
When we pulled up at the scene of the wreck and I pointed to the pile of boulders and gravel that hid the remains of the ship, I thought Stony was going to share me out among his men without stopping to argue. I managed to show him a corner of bent hull plate sticking out of the rubble just in time. He put the boys to work tossing rocks.
It took a long time. I had counted on that. By the time the air lock was clear the sun was half-way down the sky again. Jockeying the slug out of the reaction chamber and getting it into its lead case was slow work, too. While it was going on Stony and I waited in the cabin, along with Karns. It seemed the boss fancied him as a gun-pointer.
I had a hard time to manage to retrieve my hand sextant from the corner where it had fallen without attracting their attention, but I made it. I stuffed it into my possum pouch and nobody made any objection.
Except for that, Stony had played it smart all along. The only other mistake he made was at the end, when his gang came back into the cabin with the slug all snugged down in its shield. He let me crawl out first. It was black dark outside by now, and I jumped without even waiting to get to my feet. And this time I kept on jumping.
They didn't spend much time trying to find me. I was out of range of their headlights in two leaps, and why would Stony think it made any difference to have me floating in the dark, with no weapons? Of course he would have blasted me down before he took off if I had been on hand—I wasn't fooling myself about that—but he had too good a head for the main chance to waste time on such a minor pleasure. The way he had it figured, Betty and I would both be dead long before another ship touched Vesta, and even if we weren't, we would say we were raided by Venusian pirates, and he would be long gone.
They headed straight back to the ship, and Stony put as many of his crew as weren't needed for changing slugs to looting the blister. I could see their lights going back and forth for an hour, and then they all crawled into the ship and buttoned down.
I figured they wouldn't leave the blister standing, and I was right. One HE shell took care of that. Then they blasted off. I had my sextant and watch on them, and was writing down data on my knee-pad as fast as I could take them. I was using Altair and Vega for a fix, and throwing in Polaris every now and then for good measure. I kept it up most of the night. Their jet-flare winked out suddenly just before I lost them over the horizon.