"More'n once, sir. Sometimes it seems like I'll never get a job where I don't have to fight Connies."
Rip was trained in science and Planeteer techniques and he didn't pretend to know the ins and outs of interplanetary politics. Just the same, he[pg 109] couldn't help wondering about the strange relationship between the Consolidation of People's Governments and the Federation of Free Nations.
Connies and Feds, mostly Planeteers but sometimes spacemen, were constantly skirmishing. They fought over property, over control of ports on distant planets and moons, and over space salvage. Often there was bloodshed. Sometimes there were pitched battles between groups of platoon size.
But at that point, the struggle ended. The law of the Federation said that no spaceship could fire on a Connie spaceship, or on Connie land bases, except with special permission of the Space Council. The theory was that small struggles between men, or even between small fighting craft like the snapper-boats, was not war. But firing on a spaceship was war, and the first such act could mean starting war throughout the Solar System.
It made a sort of sense to Rip when he thought about it. Little fights here and there were better than a full war among the planets.
Koa suddenly gripped his arm. "Sir! Look up!"
The short hairs on the back of Rip's neck prickled. Far above, blackness blotted out stars in the shape of a spaceship. The Connie had arrived!
Rip ordered urgently, "Kemp! Stop cutting. The rest of you get the stuff under cover. Ram it!" He hurried to lend a hand himself, hustling crates into the cave.
Kemp had made astonishing progress. There was room for the crates, if stacked properly, and for the men besides. Rip supervised the stacking, then the placement of the rocket launcher at the entrance.
"All hands inside the boat," he ordered. "Dowst, be ready to take off at a moment's notice. You'll have to buck this box around like never before." He explained to the pilot his plan to dodge, keeping the asteroid between the boat and the cruiser.