“Come on,” he said. “We can be in better touch with the whole ship down on the bridge.”
“Wait a minute?” she asked. “I had an idea, while you were talking with Mr. Campbell.”
“What?”
“Dr. Hsai. He’s spent a lot of time examining Dan, talking with him …”
“And finding zero,” Larry grumbled.
“Yes, but he might be able to find something in his records… or maybe something he’ll remember… some clue to where Dan might be hiding, what he’s doing.”
Larry thought it over for half a moment. “It’s worth a try.” He turned to the nearest technician, who was seated at a monitoring console, watching the computer-produced graphs that gave second-by-second reports on the performance of the reactors and generators. “Your name’s Peterson, isn’t it?”
The blond youth smiled, obviously flattered that the Chairman knew his name. “Yessir, that’s right.”
“Would you please call Dr. Hsai and ask him to meet me on the bridge as soon as he can possibly get there?”
“Yessir. Right away.”
The oriental psychotech was already on the bridge, waiting patiently, when Larry and Val got there. All the way down the now fully lit connector tubes, padding down those spiraling metal steps, Larry had half-expected Dan to leap out at them. No sign of him. Nor of Campbell’s search parties and emergency squad.
It’s a big ship. Larry reminded himself. You could roam around for weeks without seeing another person, if you really wanted to.
All the technicians on the bridge were wearing sidearms as they sat at their consoles. And there were two grim-faced guards scowling at the door Larry and Val stepped through.
Dr. Hsai was unarmed, of course. Larry quickly explained what he was after.
The psychotech pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I must admit that nothing comes to mind right now. But I will review all my records. Perhaps there is something he inadvertently revealed that will help you.”
There’d better be, Larry thought. To Val, he muttered, “Dan could do a lot of damage to the ship, if he wants to.”
“But all the vital areas are protected now, aren’t they?”
He scanned the viewscreens and nodded. “They seem to be… but the ship’s too big. Too many soft spots. He could cut electrical connections, air lines, water pipes… anything.”
“Why would he do something like that?” she asked.
“How should I know?” Larry snapped. “Why would he do any of the things he’s doing? He’s crazy!”
She didn’t respond, but her chin dropped slightly.
“I’m sorry,” Larry said immediately. “I didn’t mean it that way. Guess I’m getting edgy.”
“I know,” Valery said.
The hours wore on. Larry finally had to sleep; he couldn’t stay on his feet any longer. He woke up two hours later and groggily made his way back to the bridge.
Mort Campbell was there, unshaven, bleary-eyed, sipping coffee from a steaming mug.
“Anything?” Larry asked.
“Nine dozen false alarms, that’s all.” Campbell sipped, then winced. “Cheez, that’s hot! No…everybody and his brother thinks they’ve seen him. But none of it checks out. Wherever he’s hiding, it’s a good place.”
Larry stood through two full shifts. Most of the time he remained on the bridge, although he put in a swing with one of Campbell’s search squads, spending several hours going through corridors and unused work and storage areas. All of them were sealed tight and lay under half a century’s worth of dust.
He had dinner with Val in the cafeteria.
“I’m going to assign a couple of men to guard you.”
“Me?”
“He was after you, wasn’t he?”
“That’s only because I showed him that Epsilon Indi’s closest planet is almost exactly like Earth. He wanted to destroy that evidence, to make sure we stayed here.”
“Oh… Now he knows you were lying to him.”
She grinned, a bit sheepishly. “No, I was telling him the truth. It was you that I lied to.”
“What? But you said …”
“It was a lie,” she replied. “To see if… well, if you were the one who’d try to… stop me from reporting to the Council.”
Larry stared at her. “You mean there really is a planet like Earth at Epsilon Indi?”
She nodded, grinning again.
“That’s fantastic! Fabulous!” Larry felt like jumping up on the cafeteria table. Then he remembered about Dan. “But I still want you guarded. He’s dangerous, and he might come after you. I don’t want you to be bait anymore.”
“I’ll be all right in my own quarters. Mother’s there, and we have a phone—”
“And there will be two guards with you at all times,” Larry said firmly.
“At all times?” Her eyebrows arched coyly.
Larry put on a sour face. “They’ll stay outside your door when you go home.”
“But…”
“No arguments, or I’ll make it four guards.”
She put her hands up in mock surrender. “Yessir, Mr. Chairman. To hear is to obey.”
“Stuff it.” Now he was grinning. “Uh… this might not be the right time, but—well, I still love you.”
“I know,” she said, much more softly. “I never stopped loving you.”
He leaned across the table and kissed her. Seven dozen people in the cafeteria stopped their meals to watch, but Larry couldn’t have cared less. Even if he had noticed them.
“He’s got to be someplace!” Larry fumed.
He was on the bridge again, talking to Mort Campbell, who was slumped tiredly on the chair of an unoccupied console.
“A man just can’t disappear for three days,” Larry insisted. “It’s a big ship, but you should have been able to flush him out by now.”
“I know, I feel the same way,” Campbell said, nodding his heavy head. “Either he’s damned clever or…”
“Or what?”
“Or he’s got friends helping him.”
Larry made a chopping motion with his hand. “No. That I can’t believe. A madman aboard the ship is one thing, but other madmen to help him? No.”
“He got Joe Haller to take his place on the shuttle, didn’t he?”
“We’ve gone through all that with Joe. He had no idea of what Dan was up to. Dan asked him to fill in for him, and he did. That’s all.”
Campbell threw his hands up in disgust. “Then where the hell is he? Why can’t we find him?”
“If I knew, Mort, I’d…”
“Emergency signal!” sang out one of the techs.
Larry went over to her like a shot. “What is it?”
The girl pointed to a flashing red light on the console in front of her, between two viewscreens. Her hands flew over the keyboard. One of the viewscreens brightened and showed a guard, bleeding from a gushing cut on his scalp. The blood was pouring down into his eyes.
“He…he’s here…”
“What’s the location?” Larry yelled at the girl.
“Airlock fourteen, level three.”
Campbell bolted from his chair and dashed for the nearest door.
Larry snapped, “Hook me into the intercom.”
The girl nodded and did things to her keyboard. “Okay now, sir.”
Leaning over her shoulder to speak into the microphone built into the console’s face, Larry said. “This is the Chairman speaking. Dan Christopher has attacked a guard at airlock fourteen, level three. All search squads converge on that location. All guard units, remain on duty at your assigned posts.” He started to straighten up, then had another thought. “Dan… Dan Christopher. Give up, Dan. You can’t win. We want to help you. Give up and you won’t be hurt.”