THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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    XI

The shooting died down to occasional rattles of small arms, usually
followed by yells for quarter. An explosion thundered from across the
crater. The /Lester Dawes/ fired her big guns a few times. A machine gun
stuttered. A pistol banged, far away. It took two hours before all the
pirates had been hunted out of hiding and captured, or killed if found
by their former captives, who were accepting no surrender whatever.

Blackie Perales had been one of the latter; he had been found, his
clothes in rags and covered with dirt and grease, hiding under a machine
in one of the shops back of the dock in which the /Harriet Barne/ was
being rebuilt. He had tried to claim that he was one of the pirates'
prisoners who had eluded the roundup at the beginning of the battle and