"The pile!"
Mike ran aft. The door to the tube cabin stood open. The alley into which the fifteen-pound, lead-crated pile had lately been driven, was empty.
Swiftly Mike assessed the situation. A helpless ship. A derelict. They'd entered through the aft airlock. They'd taken Professor Brandon off that way. Then they'd closed the lock again.
That meant only one thing. Through pure cruelty, they had avoided swift death to the ship's occupant in favor of a long, lingering one. Only the basest of men would do a thing like that.
Mike was not acquainted with McKee or Talbott, but he knew something about them. They were the lowest type of the human species. Only the bloodthirsty pirates of Ganymede ever made their victims walk space.
He returned to where Nicko was clinging to the companionway guard-rail. Nicko said, "You haven't seen it all, yet."
"Is there more?"
"That's only the beginning. They smashed everything in the control cabin. All the navigating instruments. Even if we had a pile this boat couldn't find its way down Main Street at high noon."
It followed, Mike thought grimly. "I'll be drummed out of the Guild for this."