"Hmmm," said Burleigh. Then he said uncomfortably; "One wonders about the original owners of the stuff."
"After a hundred and fifty years," said Moran, "who'd you divide with? The insurance company that paid for the lost ship? The heirs of the crew? How'd you find them?" Then he added amusedly, "Only revolutionists and enemies of governments would be honest enough to worry about that!"
Brawn came into the control-room. He said broodingly that breakfast was ready. Moran had never heard him speak in a normally cheerful voice. When he went out, Moran said;
"I don't suppose he'll be so gloomy when he's rich!"
"His family was wiped out," said Burleigh curtly, "by the government we were fighting. The girl he was going to marry, too."
"Then I take back what I said," said Moran ruefully.
They went down to breakfast. Carol served it. She did not look well. Her eyes seemed to show that she'd been crying. But she treated Moran exactly like anyone else. Harper was very quiet, too. He took very seriously the fact that Moran had saved his life at the risk of his on the day before. Brawn breakfasted in a subdued, moody fashion. Only Hallet seemed to have reacted to the discovery of a salvageable shipment of bessendium that should make everybody rich,—everybody but Moran, who was ultimately responsible for the find.
"Burleigh," said Hallet expansively, "says the stuff you brought back from the wreck is worth fifty thousand credits, at least. What's the whole shipment worth?"
"I've no idea," said Moran. "It would certainly pay for a fleet of space-liners, and I'd give all of it for a ticket on one of them."
"But how much is there in bulk?" insisted Hallet.
"I saw that half a dozen boxes had been broken open and emptied for the lifeboat voyagers," Moran told him. "I didn't count the balance, but there were several times as many untouched. If they're all full of the same stuff, you can guess almost any sum you please."
"Millions, eh?" said Hallet. His eyes glistened. "Billions? Plenty for everybody?"
"There's never plenty for more than one," said Moran mildly. "That's the way we seem to be made."
Burleigh said suddenly;
"I'm worried about getting the stuff aboard. We can't afford to lose anybody, and if we have to fight the creatures here and every time we kill one its carcass draws others."
Moran took a piece of bread. He said;
"I've been thinking about survival-tactics for myself as a castaway. I think a torch is the answer. In any emergency on the yeast surface, I can burn a hole and drop down in it. The monsters are stupid. In most cases they'll go away because they stop seeing me. In the others, they'll come to the hole and I'll burn them. It won't be pleasant, but it may be practical."
Burleigh considered it.
"It may be," he admitted. "It may be."
Hallet said;
"I want to see that work before I trust the idea."
"Somebody has to try it," agreed Moran. "Anyhow my life's going to depend on it."
Carol left the room. Moran looked after her as the door closed.
"She doesn't like the idea of our leaving you behind," said Burleigh. "None of us do."
"I'm touched."
"We'll try to get a ship to come for you, quickly," said Burleigh.
"I'm sure you will," said Moran politely.
But he was not confident. The laws governing space-travel were very strict indeed, and enforced with all the rigor possible. On their enforcement, indeed, depended the law and order of the planets. Criminals had to know that they could not escape to space whenever matters got too hot for them aground. For a spaceman to trifle with interstellar-traffic laws meant at the least that they were grounded for life. But the probabilities were much worse than that. It was most likely that Burleigh or any of the others would be reported to space-port police instantly they attempted to charter a ship for any kind of illegal activity. Moran made a mental note to warn Burleigh about it.
By now, though, he was aware of a very deep irritation at the idea of being killed, whether by monsters on this planet or men sent to pick him up for due process of law. When he made the grand gesture of seizing the Nadine, he'd known nothing about the people on board, and he hadn't really expected to succeed. His real hope was to be killed without preliminary scientific questioning. Modern techniques of interrogation were not torture, but they stripped away all concealments of motive and to a great degree revealed anybody who'd helped one. Moran had killed a man in a fair fight the other man did not want to engage in. If he were caught on Coryus or returned to it, his motivation could be read from his mind. And if that was done the killing—and the sacrifice of his own future and life—would have been useless. But he'd been prepared to be killed. Even now he'd prefer to die here on Tethys than in the strictly painless manner of executions on Coryus. But he was now deeply resistant to the idea of dying at all. There was Carol....
He thrust such thoughts aside.
Morning was well begun when they prepared to transfer the wreck's treasure to the Nadine. Moran went first. At fifteen-foot intervals he burned holes in the curd-like, elastic ground-cover. Some of the holes went down only four feet to the stone beneath it. Some went down six. But a man who jumped down one of them would be safe against attack except from directly overhead, which was an unlikely direction for attack by an insect. Carol had seen a wasp fly past the day before. She said it was as big as a cow. A sting from such a monster would instantly be fatal. But no wasp would have the intelligence to use its sting on something it had not seized. A man should be safe in such a fox-hole. If a creature did try to investigate the opening, a torch could come into play. It was the most practical possible way for a man to defend himself on this world.
Moran made more than a dozen such holes of refuge in the line between the Nadine and the wreck. Carol watched with passionate solicitude from a control-room port as he progressed. He entered the wreck through the lock-doors he'd uncovered. Harper followed doggedly, not less than two fox-holes behind. Carol's voice reassured them, the while, that within the half-mile circle of visibility no monster walked or flew.
Inside the wreck, Moran placed emergency-lanterns to light the dark interior. He placed them along the particularly inconvenient passageways of a ship lying on its side instead of standing upright. He was at work breaking open a box of bessendium when Harper joined him. Harper said heavily;
"I've brought a bag. It was a pillow. Carol took the foam out."
"We'll fill it," said Moran. "Not too full. The stuff's heavy."
Harper watched while Moran poured purple crystals into it from his cupped hands.
"There you are," said Moran. "Take it away."
"Look!" said Harper. "I owe you plenty—."
"Then pay me," said Moran, exasperatedly, "by shutting up! By making Burleigh damned careful about who he tries to hire to come after me! And by getting this cargo-shifting business in operation! The Nadine's almost due on Loris. You don't want to have the space-port police get suspicions. Get moving!"
Harper clambered over the side of doorways. He disappeared. Moran was alone in the ship. He explored. He found that the crew that had abandoned the Malabar had been guilty of a singular oversight for a crew abandoning ship. But, of course, they'd been distracted not only by their predicament but by the decision to carry part of the ship's precious cargo with them, so they could make it a profitable enterprise to rescue them. They hadn't taken the trouble to follow all the rules laid down for a crew taking to the boats.