"See this?" Kram held a shiny new needle-ray pistol in his hand. It was strictly an anti-personnel weapon, and good only for close-in combat. A hand weapon of limited powers, and nothing more.
"I see it. But as one skeleton in the museum told the other, if we had any guts we'd get out of here...."
"Follow me."
Since it sounded like an order, Luverduk obeyed it. Kram was not a lance-corporal yet. Luverduk followed his superior to one of the firing ranges for atomic cannon. Kram pointed to a dismantled space-cruiser hull, used regularly by cannoneer cadets for target practice. Its molybdenum hide was scarred with many accurately-directed blasts. It was nearly a quarter-mile from where Kram stood.
"Watch," he said. Luverduk sensed an order in that word also.
Kram pointed the pistol, potent up to 50 yards. Slowly, his long right arm came up. The streamlined weapon glinted in the afternoon sunlight. Carefully, Kram aimed—aimed impossibly—at the distant cruiser hull! Then his finger constricted on the trigger. Hiss it went.
And the hull was blasted to atoms!
"You—" That was all Luverduk could utter. He gaped, pudgy mouth hanging open, first at the pistol, then at the rising column of white smoke where the scarred hull had been. He knew at the same time that had it not been for the shock-wave absorbers covering the range with their radiations, he would at present be flat on his face, or its reasonable facsimile.
"I," Kram said, "am a weapons expert as well as an Intelligence officer. You know that. Correct?"
"Gurgle."