Their magnetic shoes touched the _Thunderbird's_ hull with a sound faintly carried through the air in their suits. They stood on the curving surface, etched in black against the starry sky. A few feet away from them, the terminator was inching toward them as the derelict rotated slowly.
With Carnavon leading the way, they clumped heavily to the ripped and tortured hull plates where the _Thunderbird_ had been sundered. By the light of their helmet lights Pop could see the thoroughness of the wrecker's work. He had been her captain, this Carnavon, and he had known just how to murder her. The outer hull was a shambles and the pressure hull holed in three places. It had been a thorough job. Only one prepared for the sudden horror of her death could have survived it. Pop Wills thought of his boy and sobbed.
The dark companionways were empty, blown clean by the violence of the _Thunderbird's_ death. Ron Carnavon led the way down into the ship to the purser's office and the vault.
Rubble cluttered the small room, bulkheads bent awry and pipes and wires littered the deck. Carnavon turned Pop loose and set him to work cleaning out a path to the vault. Pop's breath was coming in shuddering, grating gasps when he finished the work a half-hour later. Carnavon nodded approvingly and motioned him away from the vault.
Pop watched while the wrecker braced himself and took careful aim at the vault's lock mechanism with the blaster. There was a searing flash of blue flame, and red sparks showered as the oxy-hydrogen bolt sliced into the steel of the door. Pop found himself praying fervently that it would take two more shots.
Carnavon fired again, and the tiny room blazed. Pop muttered shakily under his breath and waiting for the wrecker to blast just once more.
The lock surrendered in a trickle of white-hot slag and Pop felt himself sink low. There was still that one shot left for him--and he wasn't needed now.
The door swung open and Carnavon knelt to rifle the vault. When he at last straightened, he held a pool of jagged blue fire in his gloved hand. The gems sparkled with a life of their own--two dozen faceted beauties--each worth a king's ransom--and each bought with a man's life.
Presently they stood again on the outer hull, under an unreal canopy of stars. Nearby, a ghastly satellite was swinging inward toward the ship. Pop stared at it and back to Carnavon. He began to understand what the wrecker planned. He was going to leave him here--on the wreck. And he would die here. He understood that the shot that remained in the blaster wasn't for him after all. Carnavon wasn't going to waste it on him. There was a spanner in the wrecker's hand and he now advanced purposefully toward Pop Wills.