The Theban bored on again through space. Larsen stayed in the control room or in his cabin adjoining it. Crewmen, coming apprehensively to ask Horn how the engines seemed to be doing, gave increasing signs of uneasiness about something other than the engines. Larsen sometimes went into black moods when he shut himself up for days on end and then came out halfway a maniac, looking for trouble. He invariably found it. The man on whom he loosed his fury was not to be envied.
The engineer would most likely be the one he'd pick on this time, though. His incompetence was such that, if the Theban had stayed dependent on him, it would now be a dark and helpless derelict, without gravity or lights or even a working air system to prevent the stifling of all on board. They'd have had to take to the lifeboats, if those were in condition to be used. But Horn had his doubts about them.
In the rest of the run to Hermas, the engines themselves made one demonstration of their insufficiency. Quite without any preliminary sign, the buzzing and humming and burbling of the engines gave place to a high pitched, whistling shriek. Horn wasn't in the engineroom at the time, but in seconds he was swarming over the drive, stopping it - except for the auxiliary apparatus - just before a newly formed blister on a main drive condenser plate could short that condenser and set every element in the drive blowing out in sequence.
It took four hours to disassemble the condenser and scrape every plate and get the ship back in overdrive again. Then Larsen came growling to him.
"I don't like you," he said ferociously. "I think you faked that breakdown!"
Horn stared at him. It was ironic; the engines were in bad shape, but this was the only actual breakdown that had happened since he'd been aboard.
"But," growled Larsen savagely, "you do know your stuff. So I'm changing that deal I offered you. I'll make a better one. Plenty better! You're working with me from now on. You don't have to fake any more. I'll tell you presently what the deal is. But no more fakes!"
Horn opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He shrugged his shoulders. Larsen was practically beside himself, and it was no time to make bargains or refuse them. Larsen was obviously in the state of mind which terrified his crewmen. He was ready to do murder, out of some inner need for the monstrous. At such a time he might lose all sanity and kill anybody, including Horn. And Horn needed to stay alive a while yet, until after the Danae had passed Hermas and was on the way to Formalhaut.
But if threats from Larsen resulted in an end of troubles with the engines, Horn would lose what ascendency he had over the rest of the ship's company. It wasn't much, but he might need it. So he made one last demonstration to certify that the engines' failures and eccentricities were not of his devising, but that he could control them as nobody else could.
The Theban came out of overdrive for landing. The sun around which Hermas revolved was within a reasonable distance. Hermas itself was in plain view. And then a gravelly, grumbling, grating sound came from the engines. It sounded as if good-sized pebbles were being ground to powder between toothed rollers.
Crewmen came climbing agitatedly to see if Horn considered their situation hopeless. He sat by the engines, undisturbed. Larsen appeared, ready to rage.
"What the hell's that?" he demanded.
"Nothing to worry about," said Horn, tranquilly. "It'll stop by itself. I know what it is."
He did nothing whatever, and presently the noise did stop. And from that time on the members of the Theban's crew regarded him with an uneasy confidence. The engines still made noises. This was the only ship in all the galaxy in which a space crew accepted alarming noises from the engine room as an almost normal part of their lives. But if anything happened to Horn they'd panic immediately.
The Theban made for Hermas. It was actually Hermas II, but there were no occupied worlds in its solar system. Gradually the inadequate world grew large and its alternating spots of green and brown vegetation organized themselves into continents and islands. Marshy seas could be detected, and the cloud masses took on the look of familiar weather patterns. At the time of the Theban's approach the beacon happened to be near the sunrise line, and by the time they touched ground it was mid-morning.
The ship settled to the wide expanse of cleared soil around the beacon. The beacon itself was a standard, fluorescent-plastic, highly visible cone, fuelled for years to come and safe against all possible varieties of climate and weather. The landing place was large and barren; it had been sprayed to prevent anything growing there. But there were infinitesimal, lacy, red- brown plants that had adapted to the poisonous spray and grew triumphantly to a height of not less than two inches.
There were buildings, too. Hermas had been a manned space station once. It still rated - as did all beacons - as a commerce refuge, and though the structures that once had housed a staff of observers were now battered and crumbling, the cache of stored food and the underground tank of emergency lifeboat fuel were intact and plainly marked. If a ship had to be abandoned and its crew had to take to the lifeboats, and if they could make their way to a beacon planet, they'd find food to sustain them and fuel with which to attempt a further journey.
Horn inspected this part of Hermas from the exit port. Larsen tapped his shoulder. Crew members stood behind him, some carrying tools.
"You!" said Larsen coldly. "The ship's running all right for now. Come ashore and get some fresh air."
Horn had taken certain precautions. He didn't think Larsen would risk a lift-off without him aboard, but he'd taken measures anyhow. The Theban couldn't lift off to carry out any enterprise whatever without Horn's assistance.
"This is a vacation?" asked Horn mildly.
"Call it that!" rasped Larsen. "Sure, call it that. There'll be some fun!"
Larsen's idea of fun might be eccentric, but Horn went outside. The look of this world was unfamiliar. There were, of course, the acres of deliberately barren ground around the beacon. The vegetation beyond that space might be called forest and brushwood. Some of it was green, and some of it the reddish-brown of some ornamental plants on Formalhaut. The crumbling buildings which had housed a lonely crew of Space Patrol personnel now looked utterly bleak and deserted. The lurid, fluorescent-plastic cone of the beacon itself did not look like anything anybody could make use of. Horn saw the beacon's transmitter cage, sending Wrangel waves tirelessly and monotonously to the limit of its range. For probably the millionth time, it sent its identification signal out to space.
"Hermas beacon. Hermas beacon. Co-ordinates -" It gave its own galactic position. "Unmanned refuge. Beacon only. Hermas beacon."
That signal had tripped the relay which brought the Theban out of overdrive, in this particular case for a landing no ship ordinarily passing by would think of. It was not audible except to a Wrangel-wave receiver, of course, and Horn heard no sounds except wind and the rustling of the highly peculiar foliage of the larger plants. They would be called trees only because of their size. Except for their height and grouping, nobody would ever think of them as forests.
Larsen led what appeared to be a working party away from the ship, over to the abandoned structures. Horn had no reason to join them. He sat down and considered his surroundings and his situation. He was grimly apprehensive, but of what he could not imagine. On his own account he had no immediate worries, though later he might have plenty. But he had a stun pistol neither Larsen nor the mate had tried to recover. So long as he kept the engines running, they'd be wary of interfering with him. But he had no illusions of safety.
Larsen, of course, would keep to his offered bargain only so long as he had to. Much was now self-evident about the Theban. The tramp ship could have no legitimate errand in view. She could not land at any official spaceport. No ship with engines sounding like the Theban's would ever be lifted off by a landing grid. Only desperate men would entrust their lives to such a scrap heap anyhow. If the Theban landed anywhere under pretence of normal commerce, the Space Patrol would investigate her. And the Theban couldn't take investigation.