Astro and Major Connel were crouched behind a pile of fuel drums piled near the communications and radar building in the heart of the Nationalists' base. Above them, the gigantic tree used as the radar tower rose straight into the Venusian morning sky.
After helping Tom to escape, Astro had returned to the prison building for Connel and was surprised to find the place surrounded by green-clad Nationalist guards. Rather than attempt to release Connel then, Astro hid and waited for the time set to wreck the radar communications of the enemy. During the second day, he had successfully eluded the many patrols looking for him. Once from a hiding place he overheard one of the men mention Connel. He took a daring chance and approached the patrol openly. Speaking the Venusian dialect, he learned that Connel had escaped. That news sent the cadet on a different game of hide-and-seek as he prowled around the base searching for the Solar Guard officer. He had found him hiding near the radar tower, and they spent the night close to the communications building waiting for the time to strike.
Their plan was simple. Astro would enter the building from the front, while Connel would enter from the rear. Astro would draw attention to himself, and while the guards inside the building were busy dealing with him, Connel would come upon them from behind, knock them out of action, and then destroy the radar equipment.
The two spacemen gave no thought to their own safety. They were concerned only with accomplishing their objective. Having no way of knowing whether Tom had made it back to Venusport or whether their destruction of the communications center would be of any value, they nevertheless had to proceed on the assumption that Tom had gotten through.
Astro crawled behind the drums and stopped twenty feet from the door to wait for several Nationalist officers to leave. They finally got into a jet car and roared away. Astro nodded to the major waiting to edge around to the rear and then headed for the main entrance.
Connel saw Astro making his way to the front door and hurried around to complete his part of the mission. He waited exactly three minutes, gripped his shock rifle firmly, and then crossed over to the rear of the building and stepped inside.
Once inside, the major found it difficult to keep from bursting into laughter. The large ground-floor room was a frenzy of brawling, yelling, shouting Nationalist guards trying to capture the giant cadet. Astro was standing in the middle of the floor, swinging his great hamlike fists methodically, mowing down the guards like tenpins. Two of them were on his back, trying to choke him, while others crowded in from all sides. But they could not bring the cadet down. Astro saw Connel, shook himself, and stood free.
"Stand back!" roared Connel. "The first one of you green monkeys that makes a move will have his teeth knocked out! Now line up over there against the wall--and I mean fast!"
The sudden attack from the rear startled the Nationalist guards, and they milled around in confusion. There was no confusion, however, when Connel fired a blast over their heads. Astro grabbed a paralo-ray gun and opened up on the guards. A second later the squad of Nationalists were frozen in their tracks.
Once the men were no further danger to them, Connel and Astro locked the front and rear doors and then raced up the stairs that led to the main radar and communications rooms on the second floor.
"You start at that end of the hall, I'll start here!" shouted Connel. "Smash everything you see!"
"Aye, aye, sir." Astro waved his hand and charged down the hall. He exploded into a room, firing rapidly, and an electronics engineer froze in a startled pose in front of his worktable. The big cadet gleefully swung a heavy chair across the table of delicate electronic instruments, and smashed shelves of vital parts, pausing only long enough to see if he had left anything unbroken. He rushed out into the hall again. At the other end he heard Connel in action in another room. Astro grinned. It sounded as if the major was having a good time. "Well," thought the big cadet, "I'm not having such a bad time myself!"
The next room he invaded contained the radar-control panel, and the big cadet howled with glee as he smashed the butt of his paralo-ray gun into the delicate vacuum tubes, and ripped wires and circuits loose.
Suddenly he stopped, conscious of someone behind him. He spun around, finger starting to squeeze the trigger of his gun, and then caught himself just in time. Major Connel was leaning against the doorjamb, a wide grin on his face.
"How're you doing?" he drawled.
"Not bad," said Astro casually. "Be a lot of work here, fixing these things, eh?" He grinned.
"What time is it?" asked Connel.
Astro looked at his watch. "Twenty to twelve."
"We'd better clear out of here and head for the jungle."
Astro hesitated. "You know, sir, I've been thinking."
"If you have an idea, spill it," said the major.
"How about releasing the prisoners, taking over a ship, and blasting off?"
"And have the Solar Guard fleet blast us out of the skies? No, sir! Come on, we've got to get moving!"
"We could still try to release Carson and the others," said Astro stoutly.
"We can try all right, but I don't think we'll be very successful."
The two spacemen returned to the first floor of the building and headed for the rear door without so much as a look at the line of frozen guards along the wall. Once outside, they skirted the edge of the building, staying close to the hedge, and then struck out boldly across the canyon floor toward the prison building. They were surprised to see that their smashing attack had gone unnoticed, and Connel reasoned that the constant roar of activity in the canyon had covered the sounds of their raid.
"We'll have to hurry, sir," said Astro as they turned into the lane leading to the prison. "Ten minutes to twelve."
"It's no good, Astro," said Connel, suddenly pulling the cadet back and pointing to the building. "Look at all the guards--at least a dozen of them."
Astro waited a second before saying grimly, "We could try, sir."
"Don't be a pigheaded idiot!" roared Connel. "Nothing will happen to those men now, and in five minutes there'll be so much confusion around here that we'll be able to walk over and open the door without firing a shot!"
Suddenly there was an explosive roar behind them and they spun around. On the opposite side of the canyon three rocket ships were hurtling spaceward.
"They must have spotted our fleet coming in," said Connel, a puzzled frown on his face.
"But how could they?" asked Astro. "We knocked out their radar!"
Connel slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. "By the stars, Astro, we forgot about their monitoring spaceship above the tower! When we knocked out the main station here in the canyon, it took over and warned the base of the attack!"
From all sides the canyon reverberated with the roaring blasts of the Nationalist fleet blasting off. Around them, the green-clad rebels were running to their defense posts. Officers shouted frantic orders and workers dropped tools to pick up guns. The building that held Carson and the other planters was suddenly left alone as the guards hurried to ships and battle stations.
Connel counted the number of ships blasting off and smiled. "They don't stand a chance! They're sending up only two heavy cruisers, four destroyers, and about twenty scouts. The Solar Guard fleet will blast them into space dust."
Astro jumped up and started to run.
"Hey, Astro! Where are you going?" shouted Connel.
"To find Roger!" Astro shouted in reply. "I'll meet you back here!"
"Right!" shouted Connel, settling back into concealment. There was no need to release the planters in the guardhouse now. Connel was satisfied that in a few moments the rebellion against the Solar Alliance would be defeated. He smiled in prospect of seeing a good fight.
"Bandit at three o'clock--range twenty miles!" Aboard the command ship of the first group of attacking Solar Guard squadrons, Captain Strong stood in the middle of the control deck and watched the outline of an approaching Nationalist cruiser on the radar scanner. The voice of the range finder droned over the ship's intercom.
"Change course three degrees starboard, one degree down on ecliptic plane," ordered Strong calmly.
"Aye, aye, sir," replied Tom at the controls.
"Main battery, stand by to fire." Strong watched the enemy ship closely.
"Aye, aye!" came the answer over the intercom.
"Approaching target!" called the range finder. "Closing to fifty thousand yards--forty thousand--"
"Pleiades and Regulus," Strong called the other two ships of his squadron. "Cut in on port and starboard flanks. Squadron B, stand by!"
Abrupt acknowledgment came over the audioceiver as the cruisers deployed for the attack.
"Twenty-three thousand yards, holding course." The range-finder's voice was a steady monotone.
"Stand by to fire!" snapped Strong.
"Two bandits at nine o'clock on level plane of ecliptic!" came the warning from the radar bridge.
Before Strong could issue an order countering the enemy move, the voice of the commander of the Pleiades came in over the audioceiver, "Our meat, Strong, you take care of the big baby!"
On the scanner screen Strong saw the trails of two space torpedoes erupt from the side of the Pleiades, followed immediately by two more from its flanking ship, the Regulus. The four missiles hurtled toward the two enemy destroyers, and a second later two brilliant flashes of light appeared on the scanner. Direct hits on the two destroyers!
"Range--ten thousand feet," came the calm voice over the intercom, reminding Strong of the enemy cruiser.
"Arm war heads!" snapped Strong over the intercom, and, on the gun deck, men twirled the delicate fuses on the noses of the space torpedoes and stepped back.
"On target!" called the range finder.
"Full salvo--fire!" called Strong, and turned to Tom quickly. "Ninety-degree turn--five degrees up!"
The Solar Guard cruiser quivered under the recoil of the salvo and then bucked under the sudden change of course to elude the torpedoes fired by the enemy a split second later.
As the Solar Guard cruiser roared up in a long arc, eluding the enemy torpedoes, the Nationalist ship maneuvered frantically to evade the salvo of war heads, but Strong had fired a deadly pattern. In a few seconds the enemy ship was reduced to space junk.
Concentrating on the control panel, Tom had been too busy maneuvering the giant ship to see the entire engagement, but he heard the loud exulting cries of the gun crew over the intercom. He looked up at Strong, and the Solar Guard captain winked. "One down!"
"Here come squadrons C, D, and E, sir," said Tom, indicating the radar. "Right on time." He glanced at the astral chronometer over his head. "Two minutes after twelve."
"It doesn't look as if we'll need them, Tom," said Strong. "The Nationalists got only two cruisers and four destroyers off the ground. We've already knocked out one of their cruisers and two destroyers, and Squadron B is taking on the second cruiser and its destroyer escorts now!" He turned to the radar scanner and saw the white evenly spaced blips that represented Squadron B enveloping the three enemy ships. The bulky converted cruiser was maneuvering frantically to get away. But there was no escape. In a perfectly co-ordinated action the Solar Guard ships fired their space torpedoes simultaneously. The three Nationalist ships exploded in a deadly flash of fire.
"Don't tell me that's all they've got!" exclaimed Strong. "Why, we still have the rest of the fleet coming in at 1205!"
Suddenly Tom froze in his seat. Before him on the radar scanner he saw a new cluster of white blips, seemingly coming from nowhere. They were enemy ships, hurtling spaceward to meet the Solar Guard fleet. "Captain Strong! Look! More of them. From secret ramps in the jungle!"
"By the craters of Luna!" roared the Solar Guard captain. "Attention! Attention! All ships--all ships!" he called into the fleet intercom. "This is Strong aboard command ship. Bandit formation closing fast. Regroup! Take tight defensive pattern!"
As the Solar Guard squadrons deployed to meet this new attack, Tom felt a chill run down his spine. The mass of ships blasting to meet them outnumbered them by almost three to one. And there were more ships blasting off from the secret ramps in the jungle! He had led the Solar Guard into a trap!
