“I said I haven’t much time!” said Scott sharply.
“Let me—throw in with you!” pleaded Chenery. “I haven’t got a chance anyhow! If the comets don’t kill everybody, Bugsy’ll kill me an’ he’ll brag about it! So nobody can track him, but he’ll brag! About makin’ me a fool! Let me throw in with you! Maybe I can help! I know that won’t keep me from the gas-chamber, but if I got to die I don’t want to look like a fool!”
Scott hesitated for a moment. But it was quite possibly true. Chenery’s vanity had been crushed and shredded, but he had protected Janet and attempted futile apology for the murders he’d unintentionally brought about. Moreover, Scott believed that he wouldn’t live to divide anything with Bugsy, and that he knew it. Whether or not he could be of any real use was a question, but now was no time to debate it.
“Can you get back to the control room?” he asked.
“I—I think so!” ”
“Go there,” ordered Scott. “There’s an automatic meteor-watch instrument. Do you know it?”
“N-no. But I—”
Scott stopped him. He told exactly where the instrument was on the control room wall. It was a variant of a very ancient device, a proximity-fuse, which had been devised for use in war on ancient Earth. As used now, it gave warning of the approach of objects in space. It ignored all but approaching ones. It ignored micrometeorites. Linkage with a radar-scanner cut off reports of those whose lateral change of bearing indicated that they’d pass well to one side or another. In effect, it gave warning of objects above a minimum size approaching on collision or near-collision courses.
“It’s set for one hundred miles sensitivity,” said Scott. “There’s a pointer to change it. Set it for four hundred miles. Then watch it. If the dial shows probability above five per cent, make sure the alarm-gongs ring, even if you have to turn them on by hand. Understand?”
Chenery said agitatedly, “Yes. But I’m throwing in with you—”
“And I’m giving you orders,” Scott told him. “Carry them out or don’t. But for now, don’t follow me. Move!”
He gestured. Chenery turned around and trudged up the steps again.
Scott continued his descent. His purpose here was to convince Bugsy that Janet was somewhere in these parts of the buoy. To do that, he had to keep attention focussed on himself. The way to do that was to keep in action, even though he acted only to keep attention on himself. And the best action he could take was to vanish.
He did. In the simplest possible fashion. Between the engine room and the hospital and crew’s quarters deck, there was a half-level,—a space with only half the usual ceiling height. When Lambda had been a liner, by standard spacecraft regulations, she had to carry emergency food supplies for not less than one full standard year for a maximum ship’s company. Ship owners protested bitterly against this deadhead cargo. It cut down the paying freight a ship could take aboard. But the requirement was fixed. This half-deck was the space in which those emergency rations had been carried. The practical result of carrying them, of course, was that if a ship were disabled in space, and if repairs by her crew were impossible—why—since there was no real chance of any other ship finding it, a year’s supply of food meant that those aboard would have so much extra time in which to go mad from despair before they died.
Scott reached this storage area. It was long since three-quarters empty. There were only a few big crates of now undoubtedly unusable rations remaining. The section was dark and the air in it stale. Scott stepped off the stairway and vanished in its obscurity. Then he simply waited.
Again he had bitter doubts. Now he had forty minutes or less before the Lambda would arrive near the estimated point where her destruction might be expected to begin. His guess could be wrong. There might be stray stones or steel objects. They’d become more concentrated near the coma’s center. At any instant even now there could be the final event,—an impact no one aboard Lambda would feel, because all would be dead before they could experience dying. But it might be delayed…
All this was chance, and chance would have to decide it. But Scott had to think of other things. If he should get the buoy through the comets, it would have to be because he wasn’t interfered with. He couldn’t do it with panicky jitters clamoring that they must be made instantly safe in a fashion they could understand. He couldn’t have Bugsy’s high-pitched and frantic commands that he do something right away or be burned down. He’d need to do what had to be done with absolute precision and without disturbance. He couldn’t handle the buoy and at the same time reassure blaster-men who might kill him any instant because they couldn’t understand that he was saving them.
There were, then, two actions to be performed. One would keep Janet from being found. The other would keep Bugsy’s crew of murderers from being able to hinder the preservation of their lives for, of course, gas-chambers.
Scott was now performing the first action by taking no action at all. He sat in the emergency-supplies half-deck, breathing stale air and watching the minute hand of his watch. He’d been followed down from the hotel restaurant level by Bugsy’s men. They had orders not to let themselves be seen, but to find out where Scott would find Janet. They were now wildly wrong in their guess because he’d made them so. But now they’d no idea where he was.
Minutes passed. Slowly. With a horrible deliberation. There was no noise for a long time. Then somebody dashed down the stairway, going through and past the half-deck. Scott watched him, blaster in hand, as he ran past the darkness of the storage space. If he’d stopped to look, he might have seen Scott as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. If he had, Scott would have needed to blast him. But he rushed by. Bugsy’s orders, now, were to find Janet. To follow Scott. Everything depended on it. Now there was confusion. Scott had disappeared.
Scott gave him two minutes in which to spread dismay and to rouse Bugsy to foaming fury. They were very long minutes indeed.
Then he went on to the stairway himself. He followed the same route as the man who’d rushed down. One more level and he listened. He emerged on the very last level of all. There was babbling somewhere. Scott shifted his blaster to his left hand. He weighed a less-than-fist-sized grenade in his right. He threw it. It exploded. Flames and smoke and fumes spread an incredible distance. The door of the crew’s cabin disappeared. The door-frame partly crumpled and partly vanished. There was a crater in the floor. There were cries. Scott had indicated for the second time that he did not want to be followed. And nobody would make any haste at all to disobey him. Inside the crew’s quarters men were dazed and bewildered by the wholly unexpected explosion almost in their midst. Before any of them dared to look outside, Scott was gone on past the hospital—the remaining patient was there no longer—and through another door under a sign, Lifeboat. Do Not Enter.
He closed and jammed it behind him. He went along the brief passage from that doorway to a metal, airtight door. It was closed and locked, of course. Lifeboats could be entered only when an officer made it possible. Only especially trained men could make good use of a space boat.
But Scott had a key for it. He’d let Janet into another lifeboat, far up near the bow. He now used the same key—it was practically part of an officer’s uniform—to enter this lifeboat blister. But he didn’t enter the boat itself. He locked the blister-door behind him and turned to that closet within the blister which holds space suits ready but protects them from pilfering or souvenir-hunting crewmembers and travelers. There was only one suit there. He laid out certain of the things in his pockets. The air-lock key. Grenades. His blaster and its holster.