"Take her out," said Pink to Joe Silver.
Calico then outlined his plan. Pinkham said at once, "I'll relay it to the other ships. We'll try it immediately." They all nodded agreement. Pink bent over the radio; he gave the co-captains instructions in an ancient language which they all knew, but which he felt sure would baffle any eavesdropping giants—an old, old tongue known as Pig Latin.
The officers and men scattered to their stations. Pink and Jerry took Circe to the captain's quarters, where Pink took his seat for the plan's direction, Jerry holding the Colt on Circe and the dying giant.
The space drives of the three ships were activated, and in side-by-side formation they moved slowly forward, as Pink watched keenly for a sign of objection from the gigantic "jockeys" atop them. None so far ... probably they thought Pink was under the instructions of their brother inside. Five minutes went by. Eight. Fifteen.
The largest asteroid in this part of the belt appeared ahead; it was roughly fourteen miles in diameter. The ships dipped their noses as if to pass well under it. They drew very close. Pink bent to his speaker and bellowed, "Now!"
As one, the auxiliary jets of each ship roared into life. Cottabus and Diogenes leaped out beside their flagship, and like three hotshot pilots buzzing an airdrome, the captains took the enormous spacecraft hurtling for the surface of the asteroid. Passing beneath it—or, thought Pink irrelevantly, while every nerve and sinew concentrated on the dangerous task, perhaps they were flying over it upside down—they brought their years of training and experience to bear on the problem of missing that knobbed gray surface by the smallest margin possible. Diogenes actually scraped her superstructure, with a noise that made every hair on her captain's neck stand upright; the others missed the planetoid by no more than a foot or two. Then they were clear and again in the void.
According to orders, they slowed at a distance of four hundred miles, and eagerly scanned one another in their viewscreens for signs of the giants.
Pink gave a loud shout of relief, and took a second to realize that his co-captains had each groaned....
The riders on Cottabus and Diogenes had vanished, and were undoubtedly back there by the asteroid, reconstituting their bashed-up bodies angrily. But Pink now heard, with a sinking heart, that his giant was still with him. It had leaned backward from the knees, lying flat on the hull which it had gripped with legs and arms. Somehow it had grasped Pink's plan in time to prepare itself. The asteroid had flattened its face and chest like a plane smoothing wood, and it was now forming itself anew, with, so they told Pink, a truly malicious scowl on its reformed lips.