With the three men completely off balance, Dennis methodically disarmed them. He placed all their weapons on the table, and then proceeded to encase himself in one of the bulky space-suits, keeping a careful eye on the fuming Dallas. As he dressed he continued to talk.
"I know that nothing short of this could convince you to let me be the man to enter Koerber's camp. But it's got to be this way. I swore to enter that black cruiser if I had to take it apart, and by Venus' thinking spiders, I'll go through with it! If Marla's there, she has to be rescued from that cut-throat gang—besides, I think I can make up a much more plausible story, being as I was the one in disgrace with the I.S.P., not you!" He was dressed now, and stood for a moment gazing at their reddened faces. "I'm leaving now, I'll dog this door when I leave. There's an atomic welder in the locker and you can get out in three-quarters of an hour. The rest is up to you men." He was gone as the metal door clanged tightly shut.
Trudging along the iridescent stretch of desolate ground, the thought uppermost in Dennis' mind was Marla. He was torn between the fear of what that brutal, conscienceless pirate might have done to her, and the fear she might have survived. Try as he might to reconstruct the emotion of fear, he failed time after time. Only the dull, ceaseless fury at Koerber remained in his mind, and his heart, a fury that smouldered in the depths of his being.
Slowly he approached the camp where Koerber's men tried to repair the damage his raid had made. Dennis kept his hands slightly in the air, and his feet kept kicking a scuff of glittering dust that could be easily noticed.
Without warning, an atom-ray blasted bits of a rocky cliff to Captain Brooke's right and an invisible voice boomed out:
"Hold it, copper!" There was a noticeable awe in that voice and it made Dennis smile. The scum remembered, it seemed!
Dennis stopped abruptly. "I'll talk to Koerber," he said coldly.
"Hold it right where you are, Captain Koerber's coming outside," the same voice shouted.
Cautiously Dennis let another of the midget speakers fall to the ground behind him.