It was still in the blackness and isolation of overdrive when Scott moved toward a corner of Lambda’s control room. An inconspicuous door there opened on a narrow stairway that led down to the next level and opened in the kitchen of the hotel restaurant. When Lambda was a liner, this stair was used to carry coffee and such items to the astrogators, without marching it through the hotel lobby. Having studied its plans, Scott knew even such details about the lobby.
He led Janet down. As they reached the bottom of the stair, she said, “You haven’t any real hope, have you?”
“I don’t know,” said Scott. “I’ve been too busy getting things lined up. I haven’t had time either to hope or despair.”
“I haven’t had any hope from the beginning,” said Janet quietly. “From the first moment I’ve known there wasn’t the faintest chance that I wouldn’t be—murdered. But one can only stay terrified so long. The emotion wears out.”
They reached the bottom of the stair.
“Then unwear it,” commanded Scott. “I need you to take care of a situation for me. Come along!”
He led the way, through the kitchen and past plastic-topped tables where food was prepared. He headed for a corner where there was another doorway. It had been provided for the serving of drinks and snacks in the hotel lobby area. It wouldn’t be conspicuous from there.
“This will be a bet,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m going to set up a gamble with fate or chance or destiny,—all of which have been known to cheat. But I’m going to ask you to try it.”
“What’s the gamble?”
“An extension of the privilege of breathing,” Scott told her. They neared this other door, now. “And a long-odds-against, outside-chance of ultimate survival, that’s what you gamble for. What I have to put up is simply getting the buoy through the comets. If I can manage that—and I should—you will be temporarily safe and can attend to something for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will shortly,” he assured her. “For now, we want to be quiet.”
They went out into an alcove of the lobby. It opened almost opposite a door over which there was a lighted panel showing the words: Lifeboat. Do Not Enter. From here all the lobby could be surveyed. It was empty. There was the tiny theater, and the wide doorway to the restaurant, and the counter and hotel desk space which made this part of Lambda look so much like an old fashioned hostelry. There were upholstered chairs and carpets. There was reading matter on a table or two. And there was that visible film of dust which silently testified that something was wrong.
It occurred to Scott, absurdly, that if someone did mean to deceive the crewmen of the Golconda Ship before their slaughter, a beginning would have to be made by turning the blaster-men aboard into housemaids, dusting and cleaning and polishing to make these surroundings seem lived in.
But he opened the door under the panel announcing that it led to a lifeboat. He closed it with care to make no noise. There was a short passageway and another metal door. Scott unlocked it. Beyond, there was a lifeboat blister, and the lifeboat itself, and beyond that the great mussel-shell valves that would open out to let the boat emerge. He adjusted the warning device which so much impressed passengers when it was showed to them. If there were need for the lifeboats, the standard explanation said, and if a lifeboat was about to open the blister-valves and leave the ship, and if anybody was late getting to the boat, their attempt to open the inner door would be made known to the lifeboat. So nobody would be left behind. And there was a telephone to the control room, too, in case of a need for last-second instructions.
Passengers were much encouraged by these proofs that everything had been thought of for their safety.
Scott led Janet inside the spaceboat and showed her how to close and dog the port.
“Here’s what you’ve got to know,” he told Janet professionally. “You unlock this—” he demonstrated it—“and the boat’s ready to leave. Only certified spacemen carry a key to release the boats. Then if you throw this lever—” he showed her—“you’ll be out of the blister. You’re only to do any of this or anything else I show you when there’s nothing else to be done. It won’t be suicide, of course, but it’s definitely a last resort. Understand?”
She nodded. He went on curtly, “This is the drive. You want to remember that in a space boat you use a drive to get going, and you use reverse drive to stop, but you don’t use drive to keep going. You don’t stop! If you want to drive to another boat, or a ship, or whatever, don’t aim straight at it. You could crash. Instead, aim to pass it close by. As you pass, you brake with reverse drive. That’s the way to become still in relation to the object and close.”
He lectured precisely, lucidly. He gave details. He made explanations. Once or twice he drew diagrams in the dust that lay thinly over the interior of the spaceboat.
He made no attempt to instruct her in anything but the use of the lifeboat as a survival device while awaiting rescue. But in that context he did explain, over and over, how to approach an object in space and make fast to it with the space boat’s magnetic grapples. All the while, though, he was aware that the usefulness of this instruction would depend entirely on what he managed to do elsewhere.
Presently Janet said quietly, “Only a ship’s officer is supposed to handle a space boat. You’re teaching me, though you’re Patrol. While I’m doing it, what will you be doing?”
It was a matter of interest only to Janet. The galaxy as a whole was interested in other matters. On a large scale suns blazed in emptiness and novas flamed and comets—including the Five Comets of Canis Lambda—rushed furiously through space upon errands that seemed pure futility. On lesser scales, cargo carriers were lifted from spaceports to where they vanished like burst bubbles, and passenger ships landed, and life went on… But practically nobody thought about Checkpoint Lambda.
Even the space buoy’s present population didn’t think about it especially. Bugsy’s men, and the few who had followed Chenery, were gambling in the crew’s quarters. They were concerned with how cards ran and dice rolled. Chenery was an exception. He craved to be smarter than anybody else. He’d designed this enterprise. He hadn’t wanted violence to be used, but only the threat of it, because that would make him smarter and cleverer and more certain to be admired. He was concerned with the future of the buoy. He was on it. Also, if it wasn’t destroyed within the next few hours, he had some claim on the yet-to-be-secured treasure of the Golconda Ship.
Bugsy’s thoughts about the buoy were more confused. It was part of his character that he counted on one kind of solution for all possible problems. He had a violent mind. Where Chenery saw an obstacle as something to be outwitted, Bugsy searched among possible forms of violence for one with which to smash it. Because the capture of the space buoy might have been hampered by someone getting suspicious while it was being done cleverly, he turned that capture into a massacre. Because the Golconda Ship might avoid even the cleverest of deceits, he intended to make its seizure butchery. And he didn’t quite believe in danger from the Five Comets because human violence simply couldn’t be applied to them. But, within limits, he thought of Checkpoint Lambda.