Briefly he assured himself once more that Evans was willing for him to make the trip back out to the moon in the Earth-Guard craft in the following week, and he also made certain that his own little rocket could remain attached to the greater craft and be refueled with it. Then he hastened away in the crowds that poured here and there across and around the great rocket-station.
Evans stood still for a few moments gazing around him, bewildered a little as he invariably was by the sudden transition from the silence and gloom of the great void to this brilliant and hurried scene. Across the great station at its departure-side a huge cargo-rocket was taking off, its firing-tubes deafening the ears as it thundered up into the sunlight and vanished. Already a great, sleek passenger-craft was being slid into the ascension-framework just vacated, and as its warning-bell rang out, the last belated passengers were hurrying toward it with their porters and luggage.
There remained to Evans the disagreeable task for which he had been bracing himself during the last hours of the trip—that of informing crusty old Commander Cain of his encounter with the Hawk. When he had been ushered into the office of the white-haired and white-mustached old space-veteran who was head of the Earth-Guard, Evans made his brief report with the other's stare piercing him to the marrow.
When he had finished, the Commander, as he had expected, delivered himself of a furious blast of profanity.
He finally became articulate. "Evans, you must realize what a situation the Earth-Guard is in. You know and I know that the Hawk must have something new on his ship, whether a new fuel or a new firing-tube, that gives his ship a speed beyond anything else in space. You know as well as I do, too, that the Hawk is really the one outstanding space-pirate left and that in the last decades we've cleared up the others one by one.
"But the public doesn't see it that way! The public," and the Commander smote his desk furiously, "the public sees only this one pirate, the Hawk. They see him and his crew defying the whole five hundred ships of the Earth-Guard. That's all the blankety blank public sees, and as a result the Earth-Guard's getting to be a joke!"
"But sir!" Evans managed to say, "we have no hope of getting the Hawk so long as he has his bases for refueling and resting. We must get his lunar base before we can get him, and that's why I think this Seaworth may win for us yet."
"Seaworth—." The Commander frowned thoughtfully. "It may be—it may be. I didn't know that the International Commission had put secret agents after the Hawk, but it may prove useful at that. You say Seaworth's going back with you next week?"
"Yes, he thinks the Hawk is after him in dead earnest, and that if he takes a passenger-rocket the Hawk will hold it up to get him."
"It wouldn't be beyond him," the Commander warned. "But we've another thing to think of, too, Evans. If the Hawk wants this man Seaworth badly enough, he may not even stick at holding up an Earth-Guard ship to get him! I see you smile—you think it is incredible that even the Hawk should ever try taking an Earth-Guard—but remember that he has a reputation for doing things no pirate ever dared do before, and that in this case he has the best reason in the world for trying it. And if he ever took an Earth-Guard rocket—good-bye! No matter what we did after that, the Guard would never be able to live it down!"