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frequencies they're using, mostly UHF, and I'll jam all of them that I can on the first pass, and pick up the
rest on the second. But the less chance we give them to notice that anything untoward is happening, the
better, Ready?"
Evan climbed into the seat next to Joss's. He had already spent some time readjusting the straps, "Let's
go," he said.
Joss kicked in the iondrivers.
It was a wild ride, even faster than when they had been running from the altered mining ship, and Joss
apparently had no concern for what rapid shifts in gee forces might do to a man's stomach. Evan was
beginning to regret the late morning's Spaghetti Carbonara, and said as much.
"Shouldn't eat food that goes down so easy," Joss said, and grinned.
Evan rolled his eyes at him not hard, since they were in the tightest part of the sweep around the
asteroid, the top of the hyperbola. He turned his attention to the holograph. It was filling in with added
detail of the asteroid; he could see the masts at either end of it now, like those at Willans, the tight-beam
transmittal dishes, and the domes containing the power plants that maintained them. "Those are for you, I
think," Joss said. "Here's my business."
He pointed in at the artificially enlarged holes in three places on the asteroid's surface. "The airlocks are
down in each of those," he said. "If the correlation I'm doing between the radar and the mass-readers is
correct, there's a hangar cave behind each one. Blow the doors off, and it's going to make repairs a lot
harder for these people to do in the future. If they have a future. Any ships inside them won't, if I have my
way. At the same time, there
SPACE COPS 195
should be pressure-lockable doors inside, so I think we can count on not killing everybody in the place
with explosive decompression."
"Good," Evan said. "I'll try not to take too long about the sweep, through, after you've blown the doors."
"Yes, well, you'd better not," Joss said, "because it's going to be difficult for me to make pickup on you if
you get in trouble. If I ram this ship into the side of an asteroid, Lucretia is going to cancel both our
expense accounts."
"She's such a cheapskate," Evan said, letting loose his grip on his seat slightly, as the gee forces declined
somewhat with Joss's easing up on the hyperbolic orbit.
"Now, while you're in there," Joss said, "you're going to have to find out if the place has computers for
me. And if it does, you take this." He rummaged around down beside the command console, and handed
Evan a small black box about three inches square, with a shiny metal contact panel on one side.
"This," Joss said, "is a comms pack and latchkey for recalcitrant machinery. Odds are I can get access
into their computers, if you can get this onto any contact pad or exposed wiring that the computer has.
Make a hole, if you have to. I just wish we still had my cable."
"You'd need a much longer one," Evan said, tucking the access box into one of the pressure-tight bays on
his forearm, the one that held spare grenades.
"Too damn true, but I still miss it. Those alligator clips were useful. If you can get this thing in the right
spot, I should be able to dump their whole computer memory, at least everything that's presently running
in the machine, into ours. And there ought to be something in it that will explain where our friends just
went in such a hurry, and why. And who knows what other happy information we'll find at the same
time? Do that first if you can. Then run around and wreak some random damage to keep people from
interfering with my download.''
196 SPACE COPS
"I think I can manage something of that kind," Evan said.
"I just bet you can. All right," Joss said. "Take a good look at that holo. You want to copy it into your
armpad?"
"I have it stored as a sketch already."
"Good. So shout for pickup when you're ready. And stay away from those airlocks until I'm finished with
them."
"I'll do that."
"Good. Evan "
With a look of mild embarrassment, Joss held out a hand. Evan took it.
"Break a leg, you dumb Taff," Joss said.
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