These things ran through his mind as he was going to join Chenery in combat against the blaster-men Bugsy had sent to kill Chenery.
He reached the landing where the stairway turned. From it he could see very nearly all the lobby. He saw smoke. A blaster-bolt had hit the floor and the floor covering smoked. There were two men near the top of the grand stairway. They had the air of professionals undertaking a familiar task.
The blaster-bolt—neither of them had fired it—was not even a near miss. Chenery had let off his weapon in gasping panic. It had done nothing but make smoke. Scott saw him. The two men on the grand stairway couldn’t. Chenery shook as if with the ague. He wrestled with the weapon he’d carried. He was trying to turn it on rapid-fire. He was obviously in the last stages of desperation.
The men on the stair saw a very badly-placed blaster-shot hitting the floor a good fifteen feet from them. It was a strictly amateur shot, and it made only strangling smoke. One of them spoke curtly. The two of them dashed up the rest of the stairway. Scott lifted his blaster with much grimness, and then the totally unexpected happened.
Chenery pulled the trigger of his weapon with the rapid-fire stud pushed in. The blaster made an intolerably harsh and discordant outcry. It seemed to pour out a lancelike white-hot flame which swept crazily across the lobby. It swerved jerkily back. More white smoke billowed up. Then there was an unbearable flash. A blaster-bolt had hit a blaster in the act of swinging to bear upon Chenery. The blaster blew apart. A man screamed. Then another blaster flamed momentarily and the seemingly continuous streak of fire lashed through the smoke toward it.
A man fled down the grand stairway, howling. Another man crawled down it, making noises like a suffering animal.
Chenery came out of the smoke, shaking.
“They—they’re both gone,” he said stupidly. He spoke to himself. He wasn’t aware that Scott had come to help him.
“One won’t come back,” said Scott coldly, from his position on the stair near the lobby ceiling. “The other may. You’ll have to stick it out a while longer, but I don’t think they’ll hurry. Bugsy’s still hunting me. He won’t bother with you until he gives up on that.”
He went back to the control room. The position of the marker asteroid had visibly changed. The buoy, of course, had been turned about by the shock-sobered engineer, and it was not likely that he’d neutralized its turning motion exactly. Once started on the slowest and most sedate of spins, Lambda would keep it up forever or as long as it remained a solid object. Under present circumstances, that last might not be a long time. But after one glance Scott ceased to look at the screens. Now he absorbed himself in the readings of the meteor-watch instrument. Its needle quivered. It made a sudden wild swing, almost to unity reading. Then it swung back and quivered again. That swing meant a big object approaching the checkpoint buoy from some four hundred miles away, and its return meant that it had an independent motion which had just barely urged it put of the line to make it pass dangerously close to Lambda.
Scott cursed to himself. If Janet could handle a space boat competently, now would be the time to tell her to take the boat out of its blister and go to the place and take the measures he’d instructed her in. But she wasn’t experienced. Her chances wouldn’t be improved by such an attempt. Not yet.
Chenery came in. “Lieutenant,” he said, agitated. “Did you see it? I fought those fellas! I got one of ‘em! Maybe I hurt the other! Me! I fought those fellas!”
“No doubt,” said Scott acidly. “Can you do it again? They’ll be back eventually with some others. Not yet, but presently.”
He turned the meteor-watch instrument back to the instrument board. Painstakingly, he cut down the power handled by one of the controls and watched for results. He glanced at the clock with its sweeping second hand.
“I think I can do it again,” said Chenery, urgently. Then suddenly he said, “Yeah. I can! I always thought a blaster was something you let off one shot at a time. But like you said, I pushed down that stud and it was like playin’ a hose! I got ‘em, that way!”
“A blaster,” said Scott grimly, “holds two hundred and fifty charges. With the continuous-fire stud down, it empties itself in five seconds. Then you haven’t got a blaster.”
He examined all the screens in turn. The marker asteroid looked subtly different. Chenery’s eyes fell upon it, but he was absorbed in the remarkable discovery of his own prowess.
The meteor watch instrument clicked. Scott had turned off the warning gong, but his eyes flicked to the dial. The needle quivered and shook. It showed a high-probability approach of solid objects. A single large mass would have given a steady indication. This quivering of the needle meant many objects. In all likelihood another cluster of meteorites traveled together, perhaps with the larger members well separated, yet with innumerable sand grains and pebbles rushing with them to cross the buoy’s orbit. The approach was swift. Seconds after the first warning, there was a faint cracking sound. Whatever it was, it would be larger than a pinhead, but its impact was muffled on the way in. Seconds later, two more. There was a snapping noise, probably a minute puncture. More crackings. Another snap. A possible second puncture. But there was no notice of air pressure dropping anywhere on the buoy. Punctures, if there were any, were being sealed off by the pressure-foam inside the hull plates. But the number of extremely minute particles increased.
Another snapping noise. It was distinct.
A buzzing, from the back wall of the control room. Scott’s hand flashed forward. He said harshly, “Janet, what—?”
Her voice in the phone-speaker was not quite steady.
“Something broke through the blister and punctured a viewport of the boat. I thought you should know. I’m saying thanks and goodbye.”
He was out of the control room before she finished speaking. He flung himself down the stairway. He smelled the acrid smoke of the burning Chenery’s blaster had produced. He reached the alcove once used by stewards for service to the lobby. The door under the Lifeboat. Do Not Enter sign. The metal inner door of the blister. He unlocked and dragged at it. It took all his strength to open it. But it opened a crack and air rushed in, and it banged wide. He heard the shrill whistling sound of escaping air. He wrenched at the space boat’s port. Janet released it. He dragged her out while the ominous whistling continued.
He slammed the inner door shut and panted with relief. It occurred to him absurdly that he’d told Janet he was setting up a gamble with fate, to gain for her an extension of time in which to breathe and an outside chance of ultimate survival. Now he felt that the bet had been refused. A deep and bitter anger filled him. But this was no time for anger. Air can pass fast through an opening to space. It hadn’t been three minutes since the impact of a pebble spoiled his special plan for a better chance for Janet. Now she’d have to take the same chance he had—nearly! But not quite. Now the air-leak from the lifeboat blister was sealed off by the inner lock door. He’d gotten to Janet in time. But he began to feel a deep indignation. It seemed to him that fate was cheating.
“You’re all right?” he demanded.
“Quite all right.” She moistened her lips and said, “I—couldn’t possibly have gotten that door open.”
“I’m not sure you’ve gained much because I could,” he told her. “Things aren’t going as well as I hoped.”
There was the faint, mournful Thallian mood music in the lobby, as they crossed it to reach the control room. In addition to that sound there were cracklings, tappings, and now and again louder impacts.
They reached the control room. Chenery stared. Scott’s dash out and now his return with Janet made him blink. But he knew nothing of where Janet had been. Scott had said she was resting and, he hoped, asleep.