Janet appeared to think of it, and yet not to. Scott explained what he would be doing while he tried to make it unnecessary for her to drive a lifeboat out of its blister and upon the errand he’d assigned her. If she had to do that, and kept her head, and remembered all of his instructions, she still wouldn’t be safe. But her danger would be impersonal. And if she didn’t live through it she’d lose relatively little compared to dying in Lambda.
“I’ll try it,” she said soberly, “but I wish you were going to handle the space boat.”
“I’m going back to the control room,” he said. “And for the time being I’ll do nothing, if possible. But Chenery or Bugsy may do something. So I have to be ready for anything.”
He moved to leave the space boat. Janet said gravely, “Thank you.”
He shrugged.
“It’s not a very good chance. But there aren’t many women who could make it a chance at all. I think you can.”
He went out. He listened painstakingly at the door beneath the sign that said: Lifeboat. Do Not Enter. He heard nothing. A little later he went into the lobby, as a steward might have done serving drinks to passengers.
A little later still, he heard noises down the grand stairway to the three levels of passenger cabins. They were voices. They were coming up the stairs. There was Bugsy’s voice, and Chenery’s and the voice of a third man Scott hadn’t heard before. The third voice said confusedly, “Wha’ th’ hellsh th’ matter? Why’n’t you let a fella shleep? Le’me alone!”
There was the sound of a blow and a cry, “Ow!” Then Bugsy’s voice, rasping horribly: “Come out of it! Or—”
Chenery protested, “Let me handle him, Bugsy!” Then he said encouragingly, “Not much more, Joey! Then you can sit down. You got to sober up, and fast, but you can do it! Come on, now, up the steps…”
Chenery and Bugsy appeared at the top of the staircase. Between them they had pulled and half carried a disheveled man whose head lolled to one side. They got him up to the hotel level floor. When they reached it, Scott was sitting in an upholstered chair as if he’d been there for some time. He put down a magazine, with his finger in it as if to keep a place.
“What’s this?” he asked mildly.
Bugsy glared at him. Chenery struggled to hold the sagging third man upright. His attitude toward Scott was ambiguous. Scott was Patrol, and he knew that Chenery was ultimately responsible for the murders on Lambda. But Scott had left him armed, and Chenery believed what he said about the nature and constitution of comets.
“He’s the engineer we brought,” said Chenery with some difficulty. “He was a spaceman, but he lost his ticket. Bugsy wants to check on what you say about the comets. He’s stayed drunk since—you know when.”
“A good idea!” said Scott. “I’ll let you into the control room.”
He crossed the lobby and went ahead up to that part of the ship in the buoy, which was Space Patrol territory because it was where observations were made. From it, too, all communication was handled, even the purely mechanical checkpoint call for ships to report, and the high-speed recordings and call elicited.
He unlocked the door in a manner suggesting cordiality. He helped Chenery get the stumbling, still intoxicated man inside and to a seat.
Chenery mumbled anxiously, “Where’s Janet?”
“Resting,” said Scott. “I hope she’s sleeping. I found a place for her where she wont be disturbed. She’s pretty well worn out. She hasn’t had an easy time of it.”
The seated man seemed to be about to go off to sleep again. Scott rocked his head back and forth between his hands. It wasn’t painful, but it couldn’t be endured. The disheveled engineer struggled to escape. He started up confusedly, half way out of the chair.
“Look!” said Scott sharply, holding his face toward the screens. “Look! Comets! We’re running into them! We’re going to smash into them!”
The engineer’s eyes were bleary, but they cleared as he looked. And then Scott had the unusual experience of seeing a drunken man go cold sober before his eyes.
The first sign of it was that his drink-flushed face lost color. His hands, which had pushed vaguely to escape Scott’s and Chenery’s grasp, now steadied and closed into fists. His pose lost its slackness. He straightened. And all the time the color continued to drain from his face until all that was left was a terrified grayish tint.
“God!” he gasped. “Are we runnin’ into—that?”
Chenery said anxiously, “They’re bigger than they were, Bugsy! They’re bigger! You can see! We’re nearer—”
“You!” Bugsy started. He was so enraged that he made inarticulate sounds before he could say furiously, “They’re comets, yeah! We’re runnin’ into ‘em! Yeah! What are they? Gas or what?”
The unnaturally sobered engineer trembled.
“They’re rocks,” he said, shaking. “The size of your fist. The size of houses! Mountains! They’re all sizes! We got to miss ‘em somehow!”
Scott said coldly, but approvingly, “You’re a spaceman, anyhow! It’s up to you. Bugsy wants to miss them as much as you do!”
Bugsy beat his fists together. He had a violent mind, and to him the answer to any emergency was violence. But even he knew that nothing men could do would conceivably destroy or injure the comets. The nearest of all was a glowing globe some tens of thousands of miles in diameter. There was a smaller one, perhaps not more than a fifth of that size. Then there were the twin comets, almost as big as the first, and the fifth one closing in from an angle which showed its incredible shining tail reaching out toward infinity.
“Then do somethin’!” shrilled Bugsy. But even in panic he raged. “Do somethin’ fast!”
“We’ve got probably an hour and a half,” said Scott calmly. “More or less, of course. Have you thought up a deal to offer me, Bugsy?”
“Do somethin’!” shouted Bugsy at the engineer. “You do somethin’ or I’ll burn you down!”
The sobered engineer reached out his hands to the control board. He turned a handle. There was an infinitely small lurching sensation. He turned another, and it repeated.
And the objects on the vision-screens moved visibly as groups to one side. The seemingly stationary areas of mist—doubled in size since Scott came aboard—appeared to flow sedately to the right until they showed on the starboard bow-quarter screen. The masses of stars and portions of comets on the port bow-quarter screen flowed onto the dead-ahead screen. A curious sensation of suspense developed as the ship continued to swing. Presently a portion of the Milky Way appeared where only a little time ago there had been only the Five Comets.
Lambda, obviously, was turning in space. But it was not driving. It stayed in its orbit, traveling at what would have seemed incredible speed had there been any stationary object to measure by. But the marker-asteroid shared the buoy’s velocity. It was less than two miles away. It had no gravitational field to speak of. If it drew the buoy to itself, it was by fractions of an inch in weeks of time. Market and space buoy went on together in a sort of blind companionship toward the meteor-storm, meteor-hurricane, meteor-typhoon which was flinging missiles like some cosmic rapid-fire gun aimed like a hunter’s shotgun at its target to secure a perfect, destructive hit.
The buoy was only turning. It had four steering units in its bow, and four by its stern. The shaking, sickened, unnaturally sobered engineer had a steering unit thrusting the bow of the ship to the left. Another steering unit pushed the stern to the right. Still others could lift the bow or depress the stern, and it was possible for both bow and stern to be urged in the same direction, so the buoy could be made to shift crabwise. But that was for use only when a liner made delicate, painstaking contact with the buoy to put on or take off heavy freight. Now the buoy simply turned until it faced almost exactly away from the spot among the Five Comets at which it had been aimed. The engineer fumblingly reversed the turning controls to stop the swinging.