In a peculiar way, this was another case of something found in all history and all over the galaxy. Always there were men who started things, and other men who took over what someone else had begun. They always assumed that possession meant not only ownership but competence to manage the enterprises they had seized. Very often it meant the total failure of the thing taken over. But these men couldn’t understand that. It was an inevitable stupidity of the violent mind.
“Chenery says,” said Bugsy in a flat voice, “that you caught on fast to what’s happened here.”
“What was wrong?” asked Bugsy in the same flat voice.
“Everything,” Scott told him without cordiality. “Your men in Patrol uniforms didn’t know how to salute. Your freight-handlers didn’t know how to play Fali. Your engineer thought space ships used rudders. The guards in the hospital were too smart. Much too smart!”
“No good, eh?” said Bugsy.
“No good!” said Scott coldly. “You should’ve known it. But I knew something was very wrong before I came aboard.”
Bugsy considered, regarding Scott unblinkingly.
“How?”
Scott told him scornfully. The buoy remaining in its proper orbit a mile or two from its marker-asteroid when the Five Comets were approaching and were already closer than any professional spaceman would have waited for. Before that, the buoy’s spokesman’s insistence that there was nothing to leave it for other destinations, and that it would receive no freight. The arbitrary behavior of its supposed Patrol commander.
“If you’re going to pretend that you’re a normal space installation,” said Scott coldly, “you should know how one acts! Your men didn’t. They don’t know now.”
“So this ain’t normal,” observed Bugsy. “Chenery here don’t run the hotel. The Patrol guys aren’t Patrol guys. The engineer—Nobody’s what he says. You figure it that way?”
“Naturally! Do you think I’m an idiot?” demanded Scott.
“Yeah,” said Bugsy. He paused. “You came on board.”
He looked at the ash of his cigar.
“I could use you,” he said flatly, after a moment. “You could fix things so nobody else’d think there was anything wrong. You could be useful, that way. But I’d be a fool to let you try it.”
“He says,” interposed Chenery uneasily, “that we got to do something about some comets that are headin’ into the sun, here. We’re headed to run into ‘em.”
“Yeah,” said Bugsy. “I seen a comet. It’s got a long tail. Shines in the sky. A scientist fella said the tail was so thin you could gather it up and put it in your hat.”
“Not these comets,” said Scott. “And it’s not the tail we have to dodge. It’s the heads. They’re masses of hunks of rock and metal. They give off gas that shines.”
“Forget the comets!” rasped Bugsy. “There’s something else I want to know! You came on board. You say you knew there was something wrong before you did come. Why’d you do it?”
“Partly because of the comets,” said Scott “In order to find out why the buoy hadn’t gotten out of danger when it should have, since it’s on a collision course. Partly to find out if there were any passengers left alive. Now that I’m here, I don’t think there are.”
“Just why’d you think the passengers stopped livin’?”
Scott shrugged again.
“You came here to take the Golconda Ship,” he said. “You took over the buoy as a start. There was some fighting. There are two wounded men in the hospital. Your men. No wounded passengers. No wounded crewmen. Where are the passengers and crew?”
“There’s her,” said Bugsy, indicating Janet. “She’s a passenger and she’s all right!”
“I’d like to talk to the others,” said Scott.
He heard Janet draw in her breath sharply.
“Oh!” said Bugsy, his tone pure irony. “When d’you want to talk to them?”
“Any time after there’ve been measures taken about the comets,” said Scott evenly. “There’s no use talking to passengers or anything else unless something’s done about that!”
Bugsy’s features twisted into something that should have been a grin.
“D’you want to know why I don’t buy that?” He paused. “When Chenery propositioned me about this bit—takin’ the Golconda Ship and all—I looked things up. How a Golconda Ship landin’ has been managed. They hire guards. They buy flatfeet! They set up a security force that costs millions, and they don’t care. Nobody gets in miles of that ship while it’s aground. They guard it like it was a planetary president!”
Scott frowned, but waited.
“You’re no Patrol man!” rasped Bugsy. “You took a chance. Sure! Get rid of us and the Golconda Ship’ll pay you a million or two or ten if you wipe us out protectin’ them! They ain’t stingy that way! You get us outa the way and tell them what you done for ‘em.”
Scott shrugged his shoulders.
“You sound to me,” he said, “like somebody working himself up to use a blaster.”
Bugsy said, “I am!”
He made a sudden, violent movement. Chenery gasped. Then there was stillness. Bugsy’s hand was halfway into a shoulder-holster, and there it seemed frozen. Scott had a blaster all the way out.
“You were,” agreed Scott. “And if you’d been a little more skilful, Bugsy, I’d have had to kill you to save my own life. But there’s a Patrol regulation against killing anybody if it can be helped. If I were a private guard for the Golconda Ship’s crew that regulation wouldn’t apply. So maybe you’ll believe I am Patrol now.”
He paused.
“You can take your hand away—if it’s empty,” he added. “Think things over.” Bugsy’s hand came slowly and very carefully away from the holster. “It’s quite a problem, working out a way to handle this situation. Everything I’ve been able to think of so far works out making you a corpse. Sometimes a pretty messy one. So think! Bend your massive brain to the job, Bugsy. And when you’ve an idea how to adjust matters considering the comets and the Golconda Ship and the fix you’re in now, let me know! But there isn’t much time!”
He stood up, and gestured to Janet. He took her to the stairway leading up to the control room. He nodded, and went up the stairs behind her. In the control room as the door closed she said unsteadily, “You took a terrible chance!”
“Not as much as Bugsy,” he said briefly, “and what I did may be useful. Now I want to look at the comets again.”
He pointed to a chair. He busied himself about the instruments as she sat down. It wasn’t necessary to squint into eyepieces of the instruments, they gave their readings on the vision-screens. He punched them into the board-computer. Presently he pressed the integrator-stud. There was a little click. He looked at the slip of paper slid out from a slot in the computer.
“Two hours, thirty-seven minutes, forty seconds,” he said in a tone indicating no particular rejoicing. “That’s the most probable time for us to hit the first cometary mass.”
Janet said, “But is that really a danger? I thought—I hoped—” Then she said in a suddenly level voice, “Absurd! I didn’t have any hope.”
“I didn’t have any lunch,” said Scott “and after accepting an invitation for it, too! Seriously, yes. There is hope for the buoy, if that means anything. If Bugsy gives up the idea of interfering—which he probably won’t—we can almost certainly manage to get by the comets. We—”