"Double duty now," Kennett pronounced grimly. "It may be only a matter of hours until Prather sights us—but I want to be sure of sighting him first!"
"Okay!" Marnay said.
From then on, one of the men stayed always by the visipanel, manipulating the dial which magnified space for a thousand mile radius. But all remained a vast swimming blackness. An occasional meteor flashed across, but no sign of any spaceship.
Once Marnay, at the controls, gave a few experimental blasts with the rocket speeds. The Vera jerked a little. At once Kennett was leaping to his side, spinning him around in the seat.
"What the hell!" he yelled, his face a little pale. "Do you want to—"
He didn't finish, but turned away, as the rockets purred smoothly again. Marnay smiled to himself. Had Kennett been about to say, "blow us up?" Was that the secret of the Vera?
Maybe. Marnay grew serious as he pondered on it—the rest of the ship back there which Kennett had shut off. Suppose the ship was full of Tynyte space-bombs? Marnay remembered the Patrol's encounters with Prather. They'd tried atom-blasts at first, but before they could take effect the tough pirate ship slid from beneath them like an eel in oil. Then they had tried Tynyte bombs. But the pirate ship was reputedly so fast that not one of the bombs could reach its mark with any effectiveness.
How could Kennett, then, in the plodding Vera, hope to succeed with Tynyte bombs?
A sudden fantastic thought flooded Marnay's brain—something about super speed—but he immediately dispensed with that idea. He was no spaceman, but he knew enough about Spacer construction to know that Kennett had no hidden speed here in the Vera. No, it was something else he must have up his sleeve....
Kennett went back into the middle of the ship a few more times, as though on trips of inspection, but didn't stay long.