Rip wished for a communicator powerful enough to reach the Scorpius, but knew it was useless to try with his helmet circuit. The carrier waves of the snapper-boats were on the same frequency, and they would smother the faint signal from his bubble.
But the boats might be able to hear if they got close enough! He had a swift memory of the communications circuits. The pilots were plugged into their boat communicators. If a boat got near enough, he could turn up his bubble to full volume and yell. Not only would the boat pilot hear him, but his voice would go through the pilot's circuit and be heard in the ship!
Rip grabbed Koa's arm. "Let's move away from the cave a little farther."
The two of them stepped away from the cave and stood in full view as the snapper-boat moved cautiously down toward the asteroid. Rip planned what he would say. "Commander O'Brine, this is Foster!"
No, that wouldn't do. Connies would know that Kevin O'Brine commanded the Scorpius, and if they had taken over the Planeteers on the asteroid, they would also have learned Rip's name. He had to say something that would identify him beyond a doubt.
The snapper-boat was closing in slowly. Rip knew the pilot and gunner must be tense, frightened, ready to blast with their guns at the first wrong move on the asteroid. He groped with his good arm and turned up his helmet communicator to full volume.
The fighting rocket drew closer, cut in its nose tube, and hovered only a few hundred feet above the Planeteers.
Rip summoned enough strength to make his voice sharp and clear. His words sped through space into the bubble of the pilot, echoed in the helmet and were picked up by the pilot's microphone, then hurled through the snapper-boat circuit through space to the control room of the cruiser.
O'Brine stiffened as the speaker threw Rip's voice at him, amplified and hollow-sounding from reverberations in the boat pilot's helmet.
"O'Brine is so ugly he won't look at his face in a clean blast tube! That no-good Irishman wouldn't know what to do with an asteroid if he had one!"