The skipper gave orders. Even a brief period in overdrive would put the liner beyond this solar system. Up to now, the skipper had been concerned only because he had a passenger who might be refused by Lambda. There was no precedent to tell him what to do. But Scott had asked for a precaution which made it more than mere irregularity on the part of the checkpoint. There was more wrong here than passengers who didn’t change ship and freight that wasn’t accepted. Scott had come to that conclusion earlier. The skipper said uncomfortably, “I don’t understand this!”
Scott replied, “Presently, you will.”
To him the situation was self-evident. The Golconda Ship was coming back from wherever it had gone on its fifth treasure-hunting voyage. It was going to make port at Checkpoint Lambda instead of a normal space port. It planned to distribute its riches among the financial institutions of a dozen or a hundred worlds instead of one. It was a very sound idea provided that the secret of its intention—which even now Scott didn’t feel he could reveal—and the time of its arrival remained unknown to anybody but the commanding officer of Checkpoint Lambda, until after the operation was over.
But that apparently hadn’t happened.
Taking into consideration a leak in highly classified information, and the report about the passengers for another liner, and now the insistence that this liner should go on without attempting further communication, Scott could have written a very plausible outline of events and conditions on the checkpoint.
Someone who knew where the Golconda Ship would reappear could have organized what could be the most profitable criminal enterprise in human history. Men could have taken passage from various worlds to Lambda, there to wait for transportation elsewhere. Other men from other worlds could arrive to add to their number. Then, suddenly and without warning, the pseudo-passengers could act. It could be swift and terrible. They’d take the space buoy, perhaps with crackling blasters. They might capture and imprison the crew and the authentic passengers. On the other hand, they might not take that risk.
In any event, if that had happened, the present occupants of Lambda would be waiting for the Golconda Ship to arrive and to link to the buoy for heavy-freight transfer. Then there would be swift and terrible action. It was unlikely that anybody on the Golconda Ship would survive. And then the captors of that ship would sail away with wealth so vast that divide it as they might, no one of them would ever be less than fabulously rich.
All this was inference. Only Scott suspected it, and there was no Patrol ship which could be summoned and arrive there within weeks. Scott could make a part of the crime impossible. But there were the Five Comets. If any part of the crew, or anyone listed on the passenger list was still alive it would in effect be murder unless he went aboard and attempted the impossible. He had to prevent their deaths, if they hadn’t already been murdered. The fact that even the attempt would mean that he might be killed couldn’t alter the fact that he had a clear obligation.
But all this was still deduction, even though the facts allowed of no other interpretation. Scott was wryly contemplating the total problem when the communicator-speaker rasped, “What the devil are you doing? There’s nothing to go aboard you and nothing will be received. Get on course and go away!” Somehow the voice sounded like someone speaking correctly against his usual habit—in order to seem something he was not.
Scott went to the transmitter. He said formally, “Calling Checkpoint Lambda. This is Lieutenant Scott, Space Patrol. I have orders to take command of the checkpoint. I am coming aboard. You will prepare to receive me. Message ends.”
There was an indefinable sound, as if someone had uttered a choked exclamation. Then silence. Scott knew what was happening, of course. There was a conference, on the buoy. To decide what to do about him. Scott moved the microphone to one side and said in an official voice, “Captain, if there is difficulty here I shall commandeer this ship by Space Patrol authority to stand off this checkpoint and warn all other ships of suspicious actions aboard and not to make contact with it. We will request that all ships report the situation to the Space Patrol.”
The skipper of the liner gaped at him. Scott pointed to the microphone close to his lips. The sound of his voice would have changed as he spoke to the skipper, but he’d have been overheard. They’ve have heard him on the buoy. He could actually have done what he’d just mentioned. But there were the Five Comets. And also there was an unwritten rule in the Patrol that a Patrol man never waited for help, though he might send for it. In the long run, it paid off.
He put the microphone aside. “Keep a man at the overdrive button,” he said, frowning. “If anything leaves Lambda headed for this ship, he’d better push it. I don’t intend to keep you here, of course. It wouldn’t be practical. But I don’t like this!”
The skipper opened his mouth to ask a question, but a duty-man across the control room said, “I’ve got the buoy, sir.”
A vision-screen faded out and brightened again with a relayed telescopic image. It showed first a monstrous, glittering mass of unoxidized metal that was a fragment of one of the planets Canis Lambda had lost aeons ago. They’d blown themselves to bits like the fifth planet in the First System. Now it was an asteroid, too small to be called a planet or to have an atmosphere or to be of any use except the one that was made of it. It was a marker. Its orbit around the sun was nearly circular and could be computed with precision. And the buoy stayed close to it. Ships seeking the former liner, now a freight station and hotel, could know exactly where to find it in the three-hundred-million-mile orbit the checkpoint followed. The buoy would, quite simply, be where computation placed the marker. And that was known and printed for every imaginable month, day, and hour far into the future.
It loomed large as the magnification on the screen increased. A twinkling speck appeared beside it. Scott stared and shook his head. The Five Comets on the way, and the buoy not moved to safety? Even criminals… But then his lips tensed. Things looked worse than he’d supposed.
The buoy was—had been—a ship not unlike the one Scott was on. Now it sprouted radio and radar and telemetering equipment seemingly by the hundreds of pieces. By the size of the ship, Scott could now guess distances. The glittering marker-asteroid was about two miles from the buoy. They floated in the same orbit, very near each other. More magnified now, peculiar ringed depressions appeared in the substance of the marker. They were craters, like those found on the inner moons and Mars and Mercury in the First System. They were impact-craters from bombardment of the asteroid by rocky masses hurtling through the sky. They were evidence that space wasn’t always empty where the checkpoint floated. Two robot checkpoints had vanished from their orbits here, and astronomers blamed the Five Comets and pointed to the impact-craters as proof that they were the cause.
Scott turned his head. There were the vaguely circular patches of brightness against the stars. They were the Comets, on schedule. Their orbits were commensurable, and every so often they reached aphelion all together. This was such an occasion. It had been known for a long time, but the buoy was ignoring it. It floated obliviously in space, some tens of times its own length from its marker-asteroid.
“I’ll go down to the air-lock,” said Scott. “Keep your man on the overdrive button. After I’m aboard, wait nearby until I release you or at least until half an hour has passed. And—” he passed over his written report—“see that this gets to a Patrol office as soon as possible.”