"You'll see when we land. This planetoid isn't what it appears to be. It's a shell. Our first task is to unload the bodies. Then we send this freighter on into space, so that if anyone else picks up the trail, they'll follow it and miss us."
"Why are we going to unload the bodies?" 2615 asked. "We can take a dozen that I might use as spares. That's enough."
Pwowp shook the head of the "space officer" he wore. "We're going to need all two million of them—and not as spares for you." He smiled slowly. "I can tell you this now," he said, "because we are within range of the defense guns. If you have entertained any plans for worming information out of me and then hitting me in the stomach—as you could possibly do—it's too late. If this ship were to deviate from its landing and turn toward space, it would be—not destroyed, because we need its load of robot bodies. Captured. Any other ship, even a whole fleet of warships, could be wiped out as though they never existed."
2615's eyes stared at Pwowp during several seconds of silence. "So you don't entirely trust me yet," it said. "I have a suggestion to make that might change that. We put out one space mine. There may have been more than one ship following us. Leave this ship where it can be seen. It will attract the others, and they...."
The happy smile on Larry's face as he told Stella her ship wasn't a total wreck was replaced by a stunned bewilderment as her voice came through his suit radio saying, "Thanks, Larry—and goodbye." A picture rose in his mind of a character in a play he had seen once, a man with a beneficent face and kind voice who tortured and killed while his face beamed benignly and his voice remained pleasant and happy. Stella's voice had been all that as she sped away, leaving him on a derelict already headed at escape velocity for outer space. It was too much for his mind to accept.
Then he remembered that the Hell Bat wasn't exactly a wreck. He had told her the truth. It would be able to reach the nearest repair station under its own power.
Stella had merely stolen a march on him. Dull red suffused his face, partly anger at her, partly over the thought of what his superiors would say when he handed in his report.
He went back through the airlock into the control cabin. He put fire in the rockets. He turned on the forward viewscreen. When it came to life the image was strangely flat. It took a minute for him to diagnose the trouble. One of the video eyes was out of order. The image was two dimensional.
How much more damage was there? His mind crowded with thoughts of what he would do to Stella when he caught her, then he began a systematic survey.