Hissing between his clamped teeth Karrin leaned over Rhiannon's wide shoulder and speared a finger at the control board. The Patrolmen had made the mistake of judging his boat at its space-yacht face value, but it was far more than that.
The "yacht's" concealed atomicannons blasted the other craft into radioactive dust. The frantically gesticulating figure of Janus was swallowed by the glare, and when space darkened again there was only the fused cable end, chewed off short near Karrin's porthole.
"Ge-ez!" cried Rhiannon. "Why'd you do that?"
"Why'd you do that?" cried Rhiannon.
"Didn't you see?" Karrin snapped. "It was a Rebel boat! Janus must have been a spy!"
"But there was a Patrol Nova on—"
"Rhiannon—you've done a magnificent job!" Karrin clapped a hand on the giant's arm and tightened it emotionally. He slipped the safety on his pocketed atom pistol with the other hand. "That wasn't a Nova—that was the Rebel Tetra!"