He moved to the instrument board. Chenery said shakily, “You got a space suit on. Where’ve you been?”
“Out for a walk,” said Scott shortly. “I heard noises just now. What were they?”
“M-my men,” said Chenery. He swallowed. “I—used the GC phone and told them wherever they were that I was throwin’ in with you. I said not to do anything that’d make things worse for ‘em. I brought them into this,” he added miserably. “They were my kind of men. They liked things smart and smooth and—no trouble. I figured if you—make out, you could make things easier for them.”
“If I make out,” said Scott.
He was at the control board. He reached out and touched a control. Delicately. He moved it an absolute minimum of distance. He seemed to wait.
“Then after a little,” said Chenery unhappily, “I heard a racket. Some blaster-shots. Yells. Somebody screamed, I think.”
Scott had heard the same tumult by solid conduction, when he was in an air-lock while a fire-storm of micrometeorites went past him. He touched the control again. He waited.
“One of your men?”
“Y-yeah,” said Chenery. He licked his lips. “A good fella with a pen. He did some good jobs, workin’ with me. He had on a uniform when you came here.”
Scott again moved a control. Absolutely nothing seemed to happen. It appeared that he was trying to begin the use of whatever the control governed with a minimum of noticeable effect. But he watched the edge of a screen, where the image of the marker asteroid was divided, with a part appearing on the stern port-quarter screen and another part on the next screen forward. It wouldn’t have been possible for Chenery to know if the marker asteroid moved. But Scott could tell.
He shifted a control he hadn’t touched before. By a hair’s-breadth only.
“You think he’s been killed? By Bugsy?”
“A-all four of them,” said Chenery. There was bitterness in his voice. “Bugsy couldn’t get at me right away. So it’d be like him to—take it out on them.”
“And now?”
“He’ll still be mad,” said Chenery, without hope. “He’ll come after me. There—there’s no place to go. So I just stayed here.”
“That just might be a good idea,” said Scott. He took an exhaustive look at the vision-screens. They showed no stars now, only an indefinite, surfaceless lighted mist which was the coma of the first of the Five Planets they must pass through. He seemed satisfied. “But I think we should discourage him from coming here. But one thing first.”
He looked sharply at Chenery. Chenery gazed at the meteor-watch instrument. The needle swayed wildly! He licked his lips. It was odd that he could be despairingly resigned to being killed by Bugsy, and yet be frightened by the waverings of an indicator needle which could be expected to report the coming of destruction for everybody in the buoy.
Scott threw a switch on the control room’s back wall. He said curtly into a transmitter just above it, “Things are going along all right so far. But if I don’t call you in twenty minutes, do what I told you. What I showed you how to do. Don’t act earlier unless you must. Don’t wait after twenty minutes in any case. Otherwise, your situation’s taken care of. But don’t try to call me.”
He turned to Chenery.
“Where’s your blaster?”
Chenery brought it out.
“Good shot?”
“N-no,” admitted Chenery. “I—we didn’t really use guns. Only for show. But we pulled off some jobs you’d hardly believe!” Then he said, “Morale-effect grenades worked better than blasters. I’ve got some in my luggage.”
“I know,” said Scott with extreme dryness. “Come on.”
He led the way down to the hotel level. He showed Chenery the way to get behind the curiously old fashioned room clerk’s desk with its counter and quaint draperies. It would be a very good place in which to await events.
“Bugsy thinks I’m hidden out somewhere in the stern,” Scott observed, “and getting me or Janet, he thinks, will end all his problems. So he’s not going to give up the hunt down there simply to come up and murder you. Or he may just send up a couple of blaster-men to do it. I doubt that he has much respect for you.”
Chenery swallowed.
“And if you started all this business with only four men you could count on,” added Scott savagely, “and called in a man like Bugsy for the others you’d need, you invited everything that’s happened!”
He listened. The plaintive, slightly monotonous Thallian mood music was the only sound, except for a crackling noise out on the hull plates. But it was hardly noticeable. He turned back to Chenery.
“Now, I’ve got something to attend to,” he said shortly. “From here, you command that stair with your blaster. When Bugsy’s men come into sight, drive them back. Or kill them. They won’t expect to run into an ambush. When I hear shooting I’ll come out and take part if necessary. But I’d rather Bugsy kept busy hunting me astern. I don’t want him interrupting what I’ve got to do. So—be practical! Try to hit something. When your friends come up the stairs to kill you, you can turn your blaster to rapid fire and wave it at them and you’ll probably do all right. But don’t warn them to go back! Start shooting!”
Chenery swallowed again. Trembling, he took up his post. Scott went back to the control room. He checked the vision-screens. They showed the same pale radiance all about. One marker asteroid was startlingly distinct, but it was the only thing visible on any of the screens.
Once more he moved controls, two of them. He touched them delicately. Once there was a clicking behind him, and he reached over swiftly and prevented the meteor alarm from sounding. The situation had changed since he’d given orders to Chenery to make sure it rang. Then he’d been on his way to try and fool Bugsy as to Janet’s whereabouts. Now, he was anxious for Bugsy to be directing a hunt for the two of them. He didn’t want to disturb him by putting any new ideas in his head. Which was why he hardly moved the controls—to keep Bugsy from knowing that anything was being attempted.
He had the controls on full power and feverishly watched the marker asteroid. There’d be changes needed in the control adjustments presently, but he had Chenery on guard against men coming up from below. Meanwhile, he had to get Lambda and the marker asteroid pointing in exactly the same direction. Exactly! Lambda had to shift—
He looked at the control room clock. He grimaced. Time was running very short.
He heard the roar of a blaster on the next deck level down. He hesitated for an instant, because what he was doing was of so much greater importance than anything else. He was attempting to prevent the destruction of Lambda, and his success would depend on how accurately it was done. Interruption, even to use a blaster on Bugsy’s followers, was more irritating than exciting. He didn’t want to interrupt his work to have a fire-fight with professional killers. But—he had to.
He started down the stairway to the hotel level, a blaster in his hand. He realized distastefully that if he were recognized and word got back to Bugsy, that the continuation of what was to be an extremely critical operation might not take place. Nobody could do delicate work with a space buoy while defending himself against Bugsy.