"Well, everyone's turn comes sooner or later in that game," philosophized Calden. "It may be the Hawk's now."
Evans pulled a speaking-tube toward him and shouted down into it over the roar of the rocket's explosions. "Hartley? Put full crews on all the electric-guns and have them stand ready for action. Yes. And tell them it's the Hawk we're after this time—it'll put them on their toes."
Calden grinned as a moment later a muffled cheer came up from the gun-rooms beneath. "They're on their toes, evidently," he commented. "They're as crazy to get their hands on the Hawk as you are."
Evans made no answer but started ahead with teeth clenched upon his lower lip, glancing over now and then at the dials that recorded the rocket's position between earth and moon. This recording was automatic, being dependent on the change in the gravitational power of the two bodies. Evans saw by them now that the rocket was hurtling into the very zone in which the Pallas had reported itself.
Missed!
He reached to turn a knob and there clicked up into position against the lenses set in the pilot-house window two long metal tubes with eye-pieces that formed powerful binoculars. Gazing ahead through these he kept watch, while with fingers on the firing-levers of the rocket's tubes Calden kept them steady on their course. Minutes passed before Evans uttered a cry.
"They're just ahead!" he exclaimed. Then, into the tube—"All batteries ready, Hartley, and use the port guns when we bank."
"Lord, look at that fellow!" breathed Calden as he too stared ahead. "He sure can handle a rocket—the Hawk can't get his guns on him!"
Far ahead of them in the void the scene of combat to which they had been summoned was rushing into view. A tiny and shining one-man rocket was dodging and twisting and circling in space, with its firing-tubes flaming first on one end and then on the other to keep it in an ever-changing course. And around it, like a great grim pike rushing a shining chub, was circling and swooping a long dead-black rocket of the same size almost as the Earth-Guard craft. It was the dreaded black rocket of the Hawk, reputed the swiftest craft in space.