"He was wrong," Rip said gently. Then, just to make himself perfectly clear, he added, "Commander O'Brine was within his rights when he made us rake radiation. But he forgot one thing. Planeteers know the regulations, too. Excuse me, sir. I have to get my men decontaminated."
Inside the decontamination chamber, the Planeteers took off their masks and faced Rip with admiring grins. For a moment he grinned back, feeling pretty good. He had held his own with the spacemen, and he sensed that his men liked him.
"All right," he said briskly. "Strip down and get into the showers."
In a few moments they were all standing under the chemically treated water, washing off the contaminated dust. Rip paid special attention to his hair, because that was where the dust was most likely to stick. He had it well lathered when the water suddenly cut off. At the same moment, the[pg 040] cruiser shuddered slightly as control blasts stopped its spinning and left them all weightless. Rip saw instantly what had happened. He called, "All right, men. Down on the floor."
The Planeteers instantly slid to the shower deck. In a few seconds the pressure of deceleration pushed at them.
"I like spacemen," Rip said wryly. "They wait until just the right moment before they cut the water and decelerate. Now we're stuck in our birthday suits until we land—wherever that may be."
Corporal Nels Pederson spoke up in a soft Stockholm accent. "Never mind, sor. Ve'll get back at them. Ve alvays do!"
While the Scorpius decelerated and started maneuvering for a landing, Rip did some rapid calculations. He knew the acceleration and deceleration rates of cruisers of this class measured in terms of time, and part of his daily routine on the space platform had been to examine the daily astro-plot which gave the positions of all planets and other large bodies within the solar system.
There was only one possible destination: Mars.
Rip's pulse quickened. He had always wanted to visit the red planet. Of course he had seen all the films, audio-mags, and books on the planet, and he had tried to see the weekly spacecast. He had a good idea of what the planet was like, but reading or[pg 041] viewing was not like actually landing and taking a look for himself.