"I hear them out there!" Henry said.
Joachim squeaked, bounded to the bunk, and sprang through the hatch. "Bet he bumped his head," Ranjit hoped. "Up you go, Morna. Strap yourself to a couch."
Morna climbed on the bunk and through the hatch. Ranjit followed, "It's a trick," Morna said. "He'll be alone with his gangster friends."
"There's a set of spanner wrenches right there in the net," Ranjit said, pointing. "There's a roll of wire over yonder." He closed the hatch.
Henry raised the bunk back to the ceiling. He fumbled in the accumulation behind the netting, throwing out a case of canned beans, a one-volume encyclopedia, a bundle of papers, and a broken clock. He found the wrenches and selected a large one half a meter long. He searched again, pulled out a coil of electric cable, and stuffed it under his belt. Jumping across the compartment, he clung to the net above the door.
Vicenzo and Aziz had not turned off their loudspeakers. "Nothing but tanks and ladderchutes," Vicenzo was saying. "There has to be a control room somewhere."
Aziz said, "Maybe there's another door behind all the junk in there. I'll get it outta the old man."
As Vicenzo's spacesuited figure appeared below in the doorway, Henry swung his arm. The spanner clanged against the back of Vicenzo's helmet. The man tumbled across the compartment into the netting. The rocket launcher whirled from his hands, struck the ceiling, and bounced to the deck.
Slashing upward with his knife, Aziz twisted into the compartment. Henry met the thrust with the spanner and knocked the knife from the squat man's hand. Aziz bellowed, "Ya greasy cube! I'll squash ya!"