Mury smiled. "Yes," he agreed. "We fooled them this time."
Then a thought jolted Ryd; he gasped, "Listen! Did you think about—That battleship might have picked up those guys you dropped out of the locks! They've got us right here—we can't get away—maybe they're just—"
"Why would they?" Mury shrugged again. "But that chance had to be taken. Space is rather big, you know."
IV
It was not more than three minutes later that young Arliess began to twitch and mutter under the neuromuscular impact of a cc. of arterially-injected vitalin. The Fleet doctor straightened and returned his small, bright needle to its velvet-lined case, snapping it shut hurriedly.
"He'll recover consciousness within a very few minutes. You'll be wanting to be on your way, no doubt...."
When the doctor had escaped gratefully from the Shahrazad's topsy-turvy gravity, Mury gave power to the overdrive, sent the ship swinging back into a course for the point of intersection with the flight of the power projectile. The great curve that had taken them off the planet had placed them now almost directly in front of that hurtling objective; Shahrazad, still slowly gathering additional momentum, would be overtaken by the cargo shell at the moment that she reached a velocity practically equal with its own.
To ensure that, Mury's long, skillful fingers twirled a vernier, finely adjusting the fuel flow into the disintegration chambers behind the after bulkhead, and with it the volume of steam which, smashed to atoms, was hurled at stupendous velocity from the driving jets to propel the rocket ship. An acceleration just a trifle under one gravity—the calculator clicked out its results down to six decimals. The gyroscopes locked the towship in its new groove in space.
Yet Arliess jerked ineffectually in his clamps, cried out thickly. His eyes came stickily open behind their square goggles. He sat stiff and still for a long minute.