He shook his head. Bugsy’s voice rose again, “All right! I’ll ask him! Chenery an’ me, we’ll ask him!”
A door-catch stirred. On the instant Scott had seized Janet’s hand. He drew her swiftly away. Past the hospital space. Past the barred door where two wounded men had been put hastily to make window-dressing for a test of the look of things. Around a corner in the corridor. There he stopped and whispered close to Janet’s ear.
“This, I didn’t intend! But we’re all right!”
The door-catch stirred again and the sound of voices rose in volume. The door closed, and the murmur diminished.
Chenery’s voice came fearfully: “I’m not sayin’ anything but we oughta make sure, Bugsy! It’s your life as much as mine! I’m not tryin’ to put anything over! But those comets are there! They’re showin’ bigger on the screens! We oughta make sure!”
Chenery’s voice seemed to be approaching. Bugsy rasped something unintelligible.
“We can ask him!” protested Chenery. “He’s your man, not mine! You picked him! An’ now he’s hurt, but he can tell if the lieutenant’s lyin’ about those comets!”
Scott murmured under his breath, “They’re going to talk to one of the men in hospital. Their astrogator’s hurt. Not a bad break!”
He heard curious rustling sounds which were footfalls on a soundless floor. Then he frowned. Bugsy and Chenery were between them and not only the tube-stair they’d come by, but the normal stairway to the upper levels. Lifts and elevators hadn’t been built into the buoy when it was a ship, because emergency locks couldn’t be put into an elevator shaft. It couldn’t be divided into airtight sections. But there were the two men moving to cut them off, if there should be an alarm.
He got out his blaster. If anything happened to him, it would be the same as if it had happened to Janet. He said reluctantly, “If it comes to shooting, I think you’d better join in. This is no time to be a lady. They aren’t gentlemen.”
She caught her breath. He didn’t look to see if she’d brought out the weapon he’d given her. He watched.
He didn’t actually see either Bugsy or Chenery. He heard their almost inaudible footsteps on the supposedly noiseless flooring. He saw shadows moving on a wall. They vanished. Chenery and Bugsy had gone into the barred hospital room where the two patients were.
Bugsy rasped, “Halley!”
No stir or answer. Then a movement in the other hospital bed. A voice spoke weakly. The words were slurred.
“Keep outa this!” snapped Bugsy. “Halley, wake up! What’s a comet made of? Gas or what?”
Bugsy angrily shook the injured man and demanded information. It could have been brutal; it could have been agonizing. But the man did not respond at all.
“Wake up, damnit!” snarled Bugsy. “What’s a comet made of?”
The faint voice spoke again, more distinctly.
“Keep out—” Then Bugsy’s voice stopped. “What? Dead?” Movements in the room. Then Bugsy again. “Yeah!” His tone was pure sarcasm. “Okay, Chenery! you ask him!”
Then the faint voice spoke for the third time. And Scott moved faster than he’d ever moved in his life. He was standing in the doorway, blaster out, before Bugsy grasped what the remaining injured man had said.
“Th’ lieutenant went past—”
“That’s right, Bugsy,” said Scott. “Please don’t reach for a blaster! If you do I’ll have to kill you!”
Bugsy whirled, but he’d had his lesson. He did not reach for a weapon. Chenery raised his hands without orders. His throat worked. Then he managed to protest, “I been arguin’ with him, Lieutenant! Tryin’ to work out a deal—”
Scott beckoned with his blaster. The sound of voices was only a murmur as the captors of the buoy argued with each other. But the raising of a voice here would bring them all out—not alarmed, but ending all hope.
But no voice was raised. Scott took Bugsy’s blaster as he came out, grinding his teeth. Scott touched Chenery’s, and left it in place. Chenery caught his breath.
“We go back to the control room,” said Scott in a low tone. “I’ve got to put it into Bugsy’s thick skull what the situation is. There’s just been a development you don’t seem to realize yet.”
He gestured to point out the way they were to go. It was the regular route upward. There was no point in giving out useful information. As they ascended, they could distinctly hear the voices in the crew’s quarters. It was not a murmur now. It was a dispute. Once, men shouted at each other. Bugsy cursed. He knew they should have had a leader suppressing argument and giving orders.
“I was looking into something important,” said Scott quietly, “when you came along. When we get to the control room I’ll tell you what you don’t seem to realize, and maybe you’ll act sensibly!”
He was acutely aware of the irony in that statement. There was nothing for his captives to do but die in white-hot meteoric flames, if they could come to no understanding with him, or surrender meekly, with dying a matter of weeks off instead of hours. They might not think it sensible to accept either alternative. But it wasn’t easy to think of a third.
“You should,” he observed while they were climbing the stairway from the engine room, “you should have had a getaway ship, just in case. You could have made a deal with somebody to come by and take all the freight aboard here as a gift. Space freight is usually pretty valuable stuff.”
Bugsy spat. Chenery said unhappily, though he was bewildered by having his blaster left to him, “You’d have to tell ‘em what the job was. And they might take it over.”
It was true enough. Scott made no comment. They went through the heavy-freight level. There was no one there. The men who followed Bugsy and Chenery wouldn’t like to be alone at any time. They would be men who needed constant reassurance of their own importance. They’d be infinitely dependent; they could not satisfy their needs for themselves. And they would constantly need to be with other people. So the big hulk which was the space buoy was empty except in one crowded, smoke-filled place. There, men gambled exactly as they would on any planet between jobs. If there’d been women present, their enjoyment would have been completed. If they captured the Golconda Ship and escaped with its riches, they would crowd together in other places and continue similar diversions. The only real change would be that they’d gamble for higher stakes and the women would be fancier. And for this they committed multiple murder and ultimately faced execution.
Scott drove his captives up the three levels of hydroponic gardens. The middle one was in darkness now. They came out to the lowest of the three levels of passenger cabins. There was snoring somewhere and a faint stale alcoholic smell.
“Who’s that?” asked Scott.
“Our engineer,” said Chenery helpfully. “He’s stayed that way ever since—”
He stopped. They went on. The hotel restaurant level. All was silence. All was stillness. Doggedly, Scott shepherded the others up to the control room.
“I didn’t expect this,” he said politely. “I don’t think you’ve realized it. Bugsy, that man you found dead in the hospital. What was his specialty? What did he do? On the way up here it occurred to me that it might be important.”
Bugsy rasped, “He was a astrogator. He was—”
His throat clicked shut. He stared at Scott. The blood went slowly out of his cheeks and lips until the stubble of blue beard around his jaws looked unclean. It looked like soot. His mouth opened and closed. Then he stared blankly at the wall and tried to swallow—and failed.