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Billy flipped a switch on the dashboard below the speaking tube.
“Eddie, engage the engines. Quickly!”
“Yep!” Edgar Burroughs’s tinny voice came back. “I’m on it!”
Guthrie emerged from the hatch, pivoted and launched himself to the defense console.
John Carter floated between Billy and Guthrie. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “I’m a fighting man. I can’t sit here and watch.”
“Transmogrifier engaged,” Edgar Burroughs called back from below.
“First, I’m getting us outta here,” Billy said. He leaned forward on the yoke and the ship abruptly shot ahead. Billy snatched the paper Guthrie held out to him, scanned it and made an abrupt turn to port. There was, however, no centrifugal force from the maneuver.
“Just how does this thing work?” Carter inquired.
“It’d take too long to explain fully, but it’s like we’re sitting still and we’re making the universe move around us.”
“That makes sense, but mostly because it makes no sense. Is there something for me to shoot at somebody?” Carter asked.
Billy ignored him, flipped switches and steered.
“Ekka,” Billy called instead, “Can you get some of these people below? Show them where they’ll be sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Also, since we’re going into battle, get them in pressure suits. There should be enough to go around. Have Eddie help out. Pat too. And give Carter a gun, in case we’re boarded.”
“That’s more like it,” John Carter said.
“I’m on it,” Ekka replied. “You heard him,” she raised her voice to the crowded chamber. “Everybody below.”
The passengers of the Argent began to move toward the hatch, but some had to be helped. Ekka began explaining locomotion in the absence of gravity and Billy tuned her out with some effort.
“Guthrie,” he said. “I drive and you shoot, got it?”
“Got it, sir.”
“Warm up those lasers, top and bottom.”
“Yes sir.”
[ 30 ]
“Master,” the Jonathan Conklin-looking mort reported. “The singleships are about to engage the Argent.”
“Good. Your brothers will bring them here to me. Signal that they shall not destroy the ship, merely disable it.”
“It will be done, Master,” the mort bowed.
“Turn off the lights and leave me in solitude until the barbarians are aboard. If you intrude again before then, I will kill you.” He patted the pistol on the nearby cushion for emphasis.
The mort bowed again, turned and left. The lights slowly dimmed in the chamber.
The man waited while the slow spin of the space station brought the Earth into view. The epicanthic folds at the inner corners of his eyes crinkled as he squinted into the distance. There. A silvery glint. They were indeed coming.
There would be time to meditate. Five minutes, perhaps.
[ 31 ]
