But there was another method of escape that could be tried. Scott had devised it nearly at once. It had never been done, but there’d never been the need or the circumstances existing here. Without overdrive or even solar system propulsion Scott proposed to prevent the buoy’s destruction.
But he didn’t intend to try it if Janet fell into the hands of Bugsy’s men.
Janet could be tortured until Scott obeyed all of Bugsy’s commands. If he let himself be killed, though that would make further violence useless, it wouldn’t keep Bugsy from trying to take senseless revenge upon Janet for his own inevitable doom. Bugsy’s instinct was to violence, but not necessarily to quick murder. If his purpose was to make someone suffer for hindering his plans, he wouldn’t be impatient for the kill. It wouldn’t be the death of his victim that he wanted.
Bugsy wouldn’t be a desirable person to hold Janet captive.
Scott found his blaster in his hand. He raged. He even took a step toward the control room door. But that would be playing Bugsy’s game. Scott had seen eleven men on the buoy, and far down in the stern near the hospital he’d heard the voices of more. He could guess at fifteen to twenty. Probably a score, altogether. And whatever the adventure tape-dramas portrayed, one man against twenty was bad odds. If Scott could cut it down—good. But he couldn’t throw away his life. It had to be saved for Janet’s protection—even if protection could be no more than a merciful blaster-shot. He had to stay alive long enough for that!
There was a scratching at the control room door. Scott opened it. He had his blaster ready, but it was Chenery, in a teary panic and gasping for breath.
“Lieutenant!” he panted. “Bugsy says—do somethin’ to protect—the buoy or—”
“What’s the deal?” asked Scott. His voice was full of rage and sarcasm and, it seemed to him, despair. “What’s he offering? To commit suicide? That’ll be helpful!”
“It’s—Janet!” panted Chenery. Tears finally did roll down his cheeks; He was terrified beyond description, humiliated past endurance. All his cleverness had brought him to the realization that he wasn’t smart. He faced destruction with the buoy. If Scott didn’t yield, he had less than an hour to live. But if he were spared destruction now, he was certain to be killed later because Bugsy would see no need to share the treasure of the Golconda Ship. He’d learned it the hard way. Now he had no possible excuse for hope, even if all his most desperate desires were met. If Bugsy won in this incredible contest with Scott, Chenery would be killed. If Scott should win, Chenery would die in a gas-chamber. And the only other alternative was that he’d die when all the rest aboard the Lambda did.
“What’s the proposition?” demanded Scott, again.
“Janet—” gasped Chenery. “Bugsy’s got his men huntin’ her. He’s got a good idea where to look. He’ll take the ship apart, if he has to, and he’ll find her! And when he does, unless you—”
Chenery choked. Scott’s eyes were furious. Chenery felt that he was nearer to dying than he’d ever been before.
“Tell Bugsy,” said Scott in a voice that crackled, “tell Bugsy to take his men out of my way and keep them that way! I’m going to get Janet and bring her back here. If he tries to stop me he’ll have no chance to live! I’ll get the buoy to safety—for the time being! But only after I’ve got Janet with me! Not before! And then, when we’re through the comets, I’ll tell him what he has to do next!”
“You’ll—dodge the comets?”
“The comets won’t touch the Lambda,” said Scott. His voice grated. “Not if Bugsy does what I tell him! Get his men out of my way!”
Such a warning wasn’t enough for security while he got to Janet and brought her to a place beside him. For that matter, a place beside him would be the least safe place in the galaxy. Yet nobody would dare to kill him. Not yet. Not even after Lambda emerged from the swarming, miles-per-second rushing masses of stone and nickel-steel that plunged to meet it. There was still the Golconda Ship, and after that Bugsy’s absolute need for an astrogator.
“I’ll—tell him,” panted Chenery. “I’ll tell him!”
He went away, catching his breath in gasps like a panic-stricken child. Scott closed the door again. Seconds later he was speaking very softly into the microphone that would communicate with any lifeboat up to the instant of its launching, “If you have the switch on, listening,” he murmured, “stay where you are! I’m not coming for you! I’m playing for time. It’s the timing that will settle everything!”
He heard an indistinct response. He looked at his watch and again at the comets. They filled four vision-screens now. They were a monstrous, featureless shining vapor which had no surface. Their identities were lost because of their nearness. Conceivably, if one knew exactly where to look, and at what rate to move one’s eyes in which direction, some of the larger solid masses in the mist could have been seen. But there were not many such giants. The shining portion of the comets was very nearly a vacuum. It was probably true that a comet’s tail, compressed to the density of breathing air, could be put into something not much larger than a hat. It was of such unthinkable tenuity that the pressure of sunlight itself—to be measured only in tons over the whole face of a planet—pushed the separate gas-ions of the mist away from Canis Lambda to make comets’ tails of it. Each of the Five Comets sported a tail, most of it invisible because Lambda was so close. But it was the solid parts that meant destruction.
Scott glanced at the marker-asteroid, floating less than two miles from the buoy. As he looked there was a lurid flash of blue-white flame. Something solid had hit at the marker’s edge. Some tiny member of the comets’ swarms had made impact on the mile-thick mass of steel. It had been traveling at miles per second. When it struck, the shock of its arrival could not travel fast enough to let the miniature thing act as a solid body. It telescoped upon its own substance, like a railroad train in a collision. The metal of the asteroid could not yield. Flying object and asteroid-surface exploded in a flame out of hell, and there would be a minute, new hollow pit in the substance of the marker. Anything this size wouldn’t puncture the steel hull of Lambda, of course. This might be half the size of a pea. But anything as big as a marble would go through a three-eighths-inch plate. A meteor the size of a baseball could blast a hole by its explosion that would empty a deck level in seconds.
He threw on the GC phone. He spoke measuredly into its microphone.
“Calling Bugsy,” he said icily. “Calling Bugsy. This is to confirm what Chenery will tell you. You’re looking for Janet. But I’m going after her. Keep out of my way! If I’m killed, you’ll die in forty-some minutes. When she’s with me, if you try anything you’ll have to kill me first. And then you’ll die in the hell-fire this ship will become!” Then he said even more coldly, “Get your men out of my way. If I see one I’ll kill him and you don’t dare kill me back!”
Inwardly, he knew a bitter pessimism. He’d almost gotten Janet to relative safety, at least to the point where she’d have a chance in a hundred of surviving until the Golconda Ship picked her up, if it tried. Her chance would be less but still real if the Golconda Ship withdrew discreetly to safety for itself and only reported his message to the Patrol. A ship would come here to investigate, and somebody aboard it might understand how he’d expected her to survive. But she’d have an infinitely better chance if Lambda survived too. And if he did.