“You needed him,” said Scott, “to astrogate the Golconda Ship when you took it. Now you haven’t anybody who can set a course—or know where to drive—and nobody who can time an overdrive jump, or get a ship to ground if you found a planet. But it’s not likely you can even approach a sun. It’s certain you can’t find the place you planned to ground the Golconda Ship. My guess would be that without an astrogator you couldn’t do more than drive blindly around the galaxy until all of you would go mad—or die.”
Bugsy began to swear. Horrible, unbelievable words rose to his lips and came bubbling out. Scott slapped him sharply across the mouth.
“Stop it, you idiot! Stop it!”
Bugsy stopped, numbly. That particular kind of violence wasn’t in his experience. To him, violence was blaster-bolts or on occasion admirably-engineered weapons for breaking skulls. But he’d never been slapped before.
“Whatever you believe or don’t believe about comets,” said Scott coldly, “you know you’ve got to have an astrogator. You can’t find a sun, or a planet circling it, and you couldn’t get to ground if you did.”
Chenery was clenching his fists. Janet sat quietly near the instrument board. The blaster she’d held ready during the climb from the buoy’s stern now lay in her lap. She was unnaturally composed. Now and then she glanced at Scott, looking somehow confident. But her eyes stayed mostly on the two men Scott had brought here.
He went to the vision-screens. The image of the glittering marker-asteroid had moved little; yards or fathoms only. There were many stars, except in the forward screens. There, huge luminous mists seemed to have leaped toward Lambda since he last looked at them.
“There,” said Scott briskly, “are the Five Comets. We’re headed straight for their heads. I can get the buoy through them. You can’t. I have to be obeyed if we’re to make it. And I can astrogate any ship to anywhere it needs to go. But I’ve no mind to save the lives of a pack of killers only to be killed for it afterward!”
Chenery said pitifully, “Listen, Lieutenant! I’ll do anything! What you want? What you want done?”
Bugsy said harshly, “Y’say you can astrogate us?”
“Yes,” said Scott. “Anywhere.”
“Maybe y’can roll the Golconda Ship alongside—”
“I’m Lieutenant Scott, Space Patrol,” said Scott. “I’ve been given the recognition-signal for the Golconda Ship—which you didn’t think of. There’s a password to give to assure that ship that everything’s all right and it can safely come alongside and make fast”
“What’s th’ deal?” demanded Bugsy fiercely. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know yet,” Scott told him. “It just occurred to me that you might have some ideas. I don’t trust you the length of a gnat’s whisker. That makes it difficult to bargain. You figure out a guarantee that we can believe in for our own safety. If you do, I’ll listen. But it had better be good! And there isn’t much time. On our present course we’ll hit the first mass of meteors in under three hours. There’ll be a good many strays barging around before then, too,—strays big enough to wreck us.”
Bugsy said harshly, “I don’t buy that comet stuff! All I want—”
“If I’m astrogating, it’s bought,” said Scott grimly. “It’s like two cars racing for an intersection, if neither one can stop, they’re going to hit! That’s no lie. If I don’t attend to that, there’s no use making a deal.”
“Okay,” said Bugsy hoarsely. “That’s okay with me. The Golconda Ship comes after. You’re in. You’re safe and she’s safe, too, if you want it that way. We cut the take three ways.”
Scott grinned at him without mirth.
“That’s something I don’t buy! I don’t buy trusting you for half a second. Think, Bugsy! Use your brains! Figure out something better than your word. And for now, get out! This is my control room!”
He pushed Bugsy outside. Chenery said desperately, “But Lieutenant—what kind of a deal?”
“It’s up to you, Chenery,” said Scott. “I’d rather deal with you.”
He closed the control room door with Chenery outside. He turned to Janet.
“It’s the devil to have a conscience,” he said sourly. “Bugsy isn’t armed and Chenery is. I left him his blaster. I’ve told him I’d rather make a deal with him. But my conscience wouldn’t let me mention that things would be better all around if Bugsy dropped dead. I hope the idea occurs to Chenery!” Janet moistened her lips. “But you offered—you proposed—?” “I pointed out that they’ve got to have an astrogator. They do. I pointed out that I was one. I am. I said I wanted you safe. I do. I said if they contrived a deal, I’d listen. I will. But I didn’t say I’d make a bargain with them. I won’t.” She stared at him.
“They need to be kept doing something useless.” said Scott impatiently. “Such as thinking of ways to outsmart me. But the comets are coming closer. I’m stalling until they’re really close—until Bugsy and Chenery have to let me save the buoy in my own way and on my own terms.”
“But then—”
“This is my first real command,” said Scott vexedly. “Do you think I want to lose it in my first twelve hours aboard? I’ve got to take the buoy through the comets! I can do it. Bugsy and Chenery can’t. But lifter it’s through they’ll feel cocky. They’ll consider they own me. And they’ve got my ship! I have to get it back!”
Janet was bewildered. Scott seemed to be talking nonsense. There were at least twenty men aboard with blasters they’d used to murder. They expected to do more. Up to now, they’d tranquilly let Bugsy and Chenery do the worrying. But if they began to suspect or to believe the danger from the comets Scott insisted on—
“Can’t you tell them how you’ll do it?” she asked uncertainly. “You’re asking them to trust you—and they could—but they’ll judge you as being like themselves…”
“I can’t tell them how I’ll do it,” said Scott drily. “The mere idea would scare them to death!”
CHAPTER 5
The Golconda Ship broke out to normal space again. Once more it was light-years from the nearest trace of solidity. The pilot of the ship—the astrogator—was highly expert. It was not too difficult to take a spacecraft from one planet to another in a solar system. There were orbital motions and meteor streams and sometimes solar flares to complicate the problem, but it wasn’t really difficult. It was even simpler to take a ship from one solar system to another, with all the quantities of distance and of speed worked out—provided the distance wasn’t too great. At six or seven light-years the pilot would aim accurately and go into overdrive for a specific period, with an allowance for the fact that the star he was aiming for had been moving for six or seven years since it emitted the light he could see. Breakout was usually within a light-week and often much closer than that. The pilot would drive for the nearby sun in one or more short overdrive jumps. Then he would recognize the planetary system and know what to look for. Between nearby systems, astrogation was no great matter.
But the Golconda Ship leaped light-centuries and not for the neighborhood of suns. In such cases, at breakout the pilot wouldn’t know exactly where he was. The identity of nearby stars couldn’t be easily established. Unless there was an ultra-short-period Cepheid close by, he could spend days trying to locate himself while errors mounted up.
So ships normally used space lanes, duly surveyed and the stars along it fully described, with checkpoints and other aids to astrogation. But the Golconda Ship could make no use of them without revealing at least approximately where it had come from and roughly where it was bound. At this last breakout for observation it was where no other ships ever appeared at all, and it went through a long, complicated procedure to locate itself. Then it refined those results until it knew exactly where it was. But nobody else in the galaxy did. Then, suddenly, the Golconda Ship vanished.