He went on down and down the metal stair-way.
“I’m—thinking of Bugsy. He—would have killed you!”
“Surprised?” asked Scott ironically, “after what’s happened already? I’ll give him credit for one thing, though. If a man’s bloodthirsty—and Bugsy is—I like him to want to do his killings in person, rather than hire somebody else to do it. And Bugsy did intend to do just that.”
“But you—let him go free…”
“I could have killed him,” agreed Scott. “But I certainly couldn’t have jailed him. What else could I do?”
He stopped. Here was another level, with a door in the side-wall—it was metal, here—and two other doors forming the usual emergency air-lock. If the air in any part of the tunnel was lost, the two doors would close. If disaster was foreseen, every tunnel could be closed from the control room until the danger was past.
“Here’s the baggage room,” he said. “I want to inspect this. No more talk for the moment.”
He made sure the compartment was empty. He entered from the tunnel. Janet stood still, listening. The buoy was intensely silent, save for the almost inaudible sound of Scott’s shoe-soles a little distance away. It was a peculiar singing silence. There was something like the just-ended ringing of a bell in the air. Once Janet heard a clicking noise, and then the ringing sensation increased for a little while. It could have been a micrometeorite’s impact on the buoy’s hull. It was a tiny and infinitely fragile particle, no more massive than so much foam. But its velocity was enormous. It clicked when it struck, and there was a tiny speck of blue-white flame where it turned to rocky or metallic vapor, with a microscopic quantity of plating from the buoy’s hull vaporizing with it. There was no real harm in such things.
A long time later Scott came back. He looked disturbed.
“Hand-grenades,” he said distastefully, “in the baggage. Some of them have been taken out. I brought along a few for samples.”
He showed them to her. They were flat, rounded objects which looked rather harmless. He slipped them into his pockets. He led the way down again. He peered out into the hydroponic-garden level, where the air of all the ship was processed by plants growing lushly in blazing artificial light. Curious, he plucked some leaves.
Back in the tunnel he said, “Odd. They burn.”
But he immediately began to descend again. The circling of the stairway became tedious. Scott said, “I’ve got two errands. One’s in the engine room. I doubt that the man who posed as an engineer is still there. He was there for my benefit. The other thing is, I want to know where Bugsy’s men are gathered. He wouldn’t let them use the hotel deck. If somebody from the Golconda ship were to come aboard to check things, their piggishness would raise a question. They’ll have some place to be drunk in. This should be the engine room deck.”
He listened. He applied his eye to the crack to which he opened the door. He nodded to Janet and went in. He seemed confident that no one else was going to enter. She thought she heard a faint murmur somewhere and grew frightened.
He seemed to be gone a long time and she was trembling when he returned.
“I—thought I heard—voices,” she whispered. “I—thought someone was coming down the stairs!”
“When you were a passenger you didn’t think about such things,” he told her drily. “A wall was a wall was a wall. I don’t think any of Bugsy’s men—or Chenery’s—are curious about the holes and corners of Lambda. It’s more likely you heard the sounds of a poker or a crap-game. Which is what I want to locate.”
Then a door slammed somewhere. The sound carried through metal which would hardly carry voices, but Scott stopped absolutely still for long seconds. Then he beckoned to Janet and made a last descent. At the bottom he opened the door with very great care. Janet was right. She had heard a faint murmur. This was louder. In fact, there was an argument going on.
Bugsy’s voice, muffled, rose above the rest.
“But I tell you, that comet stuff is crazy! It’s all lies! The Golconda Ship men had him watchin’! He got aboard an’ Chenery knew him! So he knew Chenery an’ filled him fulla lies! The Golconda Ship’s comin’ here! We’re gonna take it when it comes—here! An’ we’re gonna be rich! What it’s bringin’ ain’t worth a million credits apiece! Not ten million! After we take the Golconda ships you can warm y’self with thousand-credit notes in a bonfire! Y’can throw it away.”
Scott listened. Bugsy was having trouble with his men. They were uneasy. Chenery’s voice came, perhaps more high-pitched than usual. He was scared. But he was placating. He was anxiously soothing.
“But look, Bugsy! The comets are there! You can see ‘em in the vision-screens! They’re gettin’ bigger! We’re runnin’ into ‘em! If we don’t move the ship like Scott says—”
Scott was amused. Janet watched his face. She was frightened.
“Forget the comets!” rasped Bugsy’s voice. “A scientist fella said you could gather up a whole comet an’ put it in your hat! That Golconda Ship’s comin’. It expects to find us close to the big rock that’s a marker for it. If we’re anywheres else it might get cagey and not land. D’you want it to figure out something’s wrong and go away, leavin’ us to get away from here by walkin’?”
There were rumblings. Someone said querulously: “We shoulda had our own ship to make sure if anything went wrong!”
Bugsy was having trouble with his men. Scott had accomplished that much, anyhow. Chenery was genuinely scared. He had no solution for the predicament Scott told him he was in, but he didn’t want to be killed by the Five Comets. If his terror became contagious, Bugsy’s men might insist on not being killed by the Five Comets. If they escaped that, they might insist on not having the Golconda Ship see through their pretense of normality. Bugsy hadn’t handled that properly—Scott’s immediate suspicion proved it. Scott would be the only man capable of luring the Golconda Ship to a mooring. At that point Scott stopped trying to work out details in his own mind. Bugsy’s men would begin shortly to insist that they didn’t want to go into gas-chambers. They hadn’t anticipated any danger at all in that line. Bugsy’d be on a spot.
But it was Scott’s present problem to arrange for the survival of the buoy, because it was his first command and he wouldn’t face the idea of losing it. Also he had to prevent the capture of the Golconda Ship, because that was his duty as a Patrol officer. Then he had to see that Janet wasn’t murdered or injured under his protection. And after that, he would deliver Chenery and Bugsy and all their followers as nearly unharmed as possible to a Patrol ship which wouldn’t arrive for weeks, so that they might keep overdue appointments with gas-chambers.
He rather wryly doubted whether Bugsy’s or his problems were less likely to be solved.
But Janet was looking fearfully up into his face. He whispered, “They’re in the crew’s quarters, I think. Not bad! But I’ll make sure.”
He went down the few steps remaining beyond the door and arrived at the bottom level. She listened. He moved a little distance from the door. She followed. Now he could definitely hear the murmuring of voices. Nearly every man aboard would be there. They’d have been forbidden the hotel area by Bugsy and Chenery, and they’d have gathered here to pass the time until the purpose of the whole enterprise was to be accomplished. They’d been gambling—for cash only, because the treasure they hoped for was still imaginary. Now, though, they’d stopped their crap-game to argue.
Scott regretfully touched one of the grenades he’d acquired. If Bugsy were in his shoes, he’d have opened the crew’s quarters door and tossed in a couple of grenades. Prompt action with a blaster could then have settled the whole affair. To Bugsy, that would have been congenially violent and very likely effective. But Scott couldn’t do it. He simply, flatly, couldn’t do it. If orders had been necessary, they’d have been issued to forbid it.