I said admiringly, "I'll hand you one thing, Mr. Biggs. You believe in sticking to theories, don't you?"
"But of course. 'Get the theory first'; that's the big secret of success in any undertaking." He looked pleased and a little excited, too. "We're going to have a good trip home, Sparks. There's plenty of food here to experiment with. And in the holds—"
It was just then that I caught my number being buzzed on the intercommunicating audio. I cut through and yelled, "Sparks speaking. What's up?"
"Sparks?" It was my relief man calling from the radio room. "You'd better come up here on the double. A message from Sun City, and I think it's bad news."
"Right with you," I hollered. I snapped a brief "See you later!" to Biggs and raced up the Jacob's ladder to the turret. My relief man was there, also Cap Hanson and the second-in-command, Lt. Todd. All three of them looked a bit grim and a bit glum and quite a bit apprehensive. My relief shoved a wire flimsy into my hand. It was a cipher message from Sun City spaceport. I knew the code as well as I know English and Universal, so I read it aloud.
"HANSON COMMANDER IPS SATURN EN ROUTE VENUS-EARTH. TURN BACK IMMEDIATELY FOR CONVOY. PIRATE HAKE REPORTED ON COORDINATES THREE FIFTEEN PLUS NINE OH NINE YOUR TRAJECTORY." It was signed, "Allonby, Comm. S.S.C.B."
I stared at Cap Hanson, wondering if my face were as queasy as my tummy felt. I said, "Hake! Runt Hake!"
Hanson said, "Yes, but that's not the worst of it, Sparks. Tell him, Mr. Todd."
Todd wet his lips and faltered, "We—we're in a serious spot, Sparks. We accelerated to max twenty minutes ago and cut motors for the free run. And since we had—or thought we had—almost nine days of idleness, I told Chief Engineer Garrity he could take down that number. Three hypatomic that's been missing."
That still didn't make sense. I said, "So he took it down? So what? He can put it together again, can't he?"