The R37Ax computor missiles arrived the same afternoon. There were four hundred of them. He selected one at random and had it taken into the ship's laboratory. Here, he ran a number of routine tests. The missile was not identical to the sample! They had made a number of improvements in the circuitry! Keeter reflected grimly that a race such as this would probably be able to deduce a launching and firing system for the thing, would probably have the planet ringed with launching stations within weeks. If the Blues had picked up a trace of him, he reflected, they would be atomized before they got within half a million miles of the planet.
The specimen for genetics, which he had almost forgotten about, arrived an hour before he was scheduled to depart. He was stunned again. She was undoubtedly the most attractive woman Keeter had ever set eyes on.
"Oh, I'm so excited," said the young lady, in a voice slightly suggestive of the virgin on the way to the sacrifice.
"I'm excited, too," said Keeter honestly.
In the control room, Keeter set a course for Arcturus. He then tripped a lever which fed a month's supply of the earthmen's fuel into the ship's almost empty reaction chambers. Another lever fed 50 computor missiles into 50 completely empty launching racks.
He checked the detectors, but found no trace of the blue ships of the Federation Patrol. Keeter allowed himself the luxury of a sigh. It was a long way to Arcturus, a long, lonely way—even for a hardened pirate, he reflected sadly. Then he remembered that that was why he had asked for the girl.
THE END