“Sure. When I get back up there—as soon as we finish playing around with the drive. What’s going on, Jay? Keep it short, I’m expected down below in a few minutes.”
Keep it short! I had so much to tell, I hardly knew where to begin. I gabbled at him. Everything. What I had overheard on the Cuchulain about the crew’s plans, Walter Hamilton’s murder on Paddy’s Fortune, my flight from Sean Wilgus, finding Mel Fury—or being found by her—the interior of Paddy’s Fortune and the new navigation aid, Mel’s arrival on board the Cuchulain—
He stopped me at that point. “You mean she’s here. On board the ship right now?”
“Yes. Nobody knows. I mean, Captain Shaker knows, but no one else. But listen, that’s not the main thing. You have to tell Doctor Eileen what Shaker’s like—what the whole crew’s like. They can’t be trusted.”
“But you’re one of them yourself. You joined the crew. Why do that, if they’re as bad as you say?”
“I didn’t have any choice.”
Duncan nodded. “I see.”
But he didn’t. I could see the doubt on his face. How could anyone be forced to work with someone they said was a murderer, and worse? He hadn’t heard the crew talking about women, didn’t know the threat to Mel.
“I’ll tell Doctor Eileen,” he said, “everything you’ve told me. I promise. But I have to be honest with you, Jay. If she were to ask me what she ought to do about it, I wouldn’t know what to suggest.” In other words, he didn’t believe me. He started to move along the stairwell in the direction of the cargo hold. “Now I have to hurry,” he said over his shoulder, “before Pat O’Rourke does too much of his ‘repair work’ without me. The only tool he understands is a hammer. See you down there in a little bit.”
He disappeared around the curve of the staircase, with the odd irregular clattering of feet against floor and walls that signaled movement in free-fall.
I stayed where I was, crushed and despondent. The opportunity that I had sought for days had come. And gone. If Duncan West reacted like that to what had happened to me, was Doctor Eileen likely to be any different? It was all very well for Duncan to say that I had changed, but he didn’t really think so. He still treated me like a child.
After half a minute I heard the clatter of his footsteps again, and was filled with a new hope. He must have been thinking over what I told him, and decided it was important enough for him to come back and get the details.
The person producing the footsteps came into view, and I had another disappointment. It was not Duncan at all. It was Joe Munroe.
He came steadily up the staircase, and I moved to one side to let him pass. I was too full of my own thoughts to do much more than notice his presence, and I certainly felt no alarm—until he came level with me, grabbed my neck and shoulder, and swung me around hard so that the side of my head smashed against the solid steps.
I was dazed, but I didn’t lose consciousness. I heard every word when he said, “Couldn’t be better. The perfect time, and the perfect place. Now we can have that bit of a talk I’ve been wanting.”
He was twice my mass, and hardly seemed to notice my struggle to get free. But I must have given him at least a bit of trouble, because he went on, “Not feeling cooperative, eh? Well we can’t have that, can we. See if this helps.”
I felt myself being swung around in the air again, faster than ever. This time I don’t know what piece of the Cuchulain tested its strength on my skull, and if Joe Munroe said anything to me, I can’t report it.
I vanished into space. I didn’t see even a single star.
It was a point of pride with me that I had never thrown up in free-fall. But I came close to it when I swam back to consciousness.
It was my head that hurt, dull throbbing pressure all around my skull. Yet it was rolling nausea in my stomach that caused me the most distress. I knew that any movement at all would finish me off and I hung motionless with my eyes closed, feeling thoroughly sorry for myself.
Joe Munroe didn’t offer a scrap of sympathy. I can’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, and he still had me by the neck. He gave a vicious squeeze, and I gasped.
“That’s better,” he said. “Don’t pretend you’re not awake. Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’re going to answer a few questions. Don’t move, either, or I’ll whack you a good one next time.” He shook me, as though I was a child’s doll. “Let’s talk about Paddy’s Fortune. You found things there, didn’t you, and never told us?”
It’s easy to talk about being brave, and a lot harder to do it. “Yes,” I whispered. I didn’t want him to hit me again.
“And this is one of the things you found, right? Come on, open your eyes and look. Right now. Unless you want me to pop your eyeballs out of your skull and make you swallow them.”
I blinked my eyes open. My dizziness increased. The stairway swam around me, and I had trouble focusing. Joe Munroe held me easily in one huge hand. In the other he had something, a hazy pink outline. It gradually became clearer.
“Yes.” The grip on my neck was so tight I could hardly work my vocal cords. “That’s—that’s it.”
Joe Munroe was holding Mel’s strange flashlight, the one that produced a beam from its empty middle.
“I knew it!” he snorted. “ ‘Crew member’ be damned. You might have Shaker taken in, he’s going soft. But you don’t fool Joe Munroe. It’s the way I said it would be. Treasure finds, and you tried to keep them for yourself.” He shook me again, and new pain jolted through my head. “Well, you’re going to lose the lot. Come on. Before you’re done you’re going to show me where you’ve hid every blessed one of ’em.”
He didn’t ask me to walk, but towed me along behind him. My elbows and knees banged painfully against the sides of the stairway and the corridor. In my general misery it was a while before I realized where he was taking me.
To my own quarters. To where Mel was hidden. He was going—with my forced assistance—to search the whole place for objects taken from Paddy’s Fortune.
I couldn’t let that happen. I clenched my teeth, closed my eyes, and thrust my hand into my right-hand pocket. Walter Hamilton’s gun was there, as it should be. Loaded.
I knew what had to be done. I had to bring the pistol out, thumb away the safety guard, and shoot.
I couldn’t miss. The gun was fully charged, it could rapid-fire over a hundred super-dense pellets, each smaller than a pea. They would expand and explode on impact, any one of them enough to kill.
I tried to bring my hand out of my pocket. And couldn’t do it. I had never fired a gun in my life, but that wasn’t the problem. I was too afraid of Joe Munroe, too afraid of what he would do to me if I tried to hurt him—and failed.
And then my best chance was gone. We had reached the door of my quarters. Munroe changed his grip, twisting my arm so it came out of my pocket and went up behind my back. He forced it higher, until I thought my shoulder would rip out of its socket.
“Unlock it.” His breath was wheezing at the back of my neck. “Quick.”
“My arm…”
“You’ve got two.” He gave another jerk and twist. “Use the other one. Do it!”
I pawed at the combination left-handed, the ciphers blurring in front of my eyes. As I was working, Munroe every second or two lifted my pinned arm an agonizing fraction of an inch higher. When the door finally opened, I felt more relief than worry. Mel might be waiting inside, but at least he was easing his grip.