Almost without conscious thought, Pop broke out the Ultra-Wave and began calling the Guard. He broadcast full particulars, co-ordinates, descriptions, everything. He was at it when Carnavon found him and sent him crashing against the control panels with a smashing overhand right to the mouth.
Pop sprawled on the metal decking and watched the wrecker carefully smash every communicating device on the ship's panel. There was a throbbing pain in his head where he had struck the shabbily padded control console, and the thick taste of blood was in his bruised mouth. He watched Carnavon like an animal, a hurt, impotently raging beast. And he began to be afraid. Even his hate couldn't spare him that, for Pop was afraid to die and he knew just what his chances were now.
Carnavon, on the other hand, didn't waste time hating. He didn't know why Pop had called copper, and he didn't really care. Pop wasn't important. The sapphires in the _Thunderbird's_ vault. _They_ were important. He'd come too far to abandon them now.
It would take nine minutes for Pop's radio appeal to reach the nearest Guard base, Carnavon calculated. And it would take six hours for the fastest Guard ship to reach them after that. He could board the _Thunderbird_ and loot her in not more than two hours. That would still give the _Carefree_ a four hour start on the Guard, and in deep space four hours were as good as four thousand. Carnavon still wasn't worried. The wrecking of the _Thunderbird_ had been the work of months, and he wasn't going to panic now. Ron Carnavon wasn't that sort of a criminal.
Blaster in hand, he motioned Pop to his feet. He wondered vaguely just why the old man had taken such a chance. He couldn't have any notions of collecting the reward for Carnavon. The amount was less than the amount he was getting for doing this--Carnavon smiled bleakly--salvage job. And the old man was a coward. He could see it in the trembling of the blue-veined hands, in the shifting faintness of the watery blue eyes. The wrecker shrugged aside the thoughts as unimportant and set to work.
With a blaster in his ribs, Pop Wills did as he was told. He braked the _Carefree_ to a stop twenty miles from the ruptured hulk of the liner. There were beads of sweat standing out on Pop's forehead and his hands shook on the firing console. A thin trickle of dark blood marred his stubbled chin. His battered lips were unsteady.