The trick had been to cause the abandonment of the Danae. That required only that the liner's engines should appear to have blown. On a modern ship without engineers, deck officers knew how to turn the engines on and off, but hardly anything else about them. If Larsen had arranged for the Danae's engines to cut off by themselves, the liner's crewmen would know of no choice but to take to the boats or to wait helplessly to die in the ship itself. Evidently they'd taken to the boats.
Larsen would have needed to put a man of his own aboard the Danae, perhaps as a passenger. With a perfectly simple bit of apparatus the whole thing could be arranged. The device would need only to cut a power line at a predetermined instant, and at another predetermined instant to restore the circuit that had been broken. Such a device wouldn't be complex, and needn't even be worked by anybody still on board. It could have been installed by an ostensible passenger before the Danae landed at its last port of call before Carola and Hermas. The man who installed it could leave the ship there and the Danae would go on, doomed but unsuspecting.
Now Horn could picture the actual event with precision. When the Danae's engines went off, the ship naturally broke out of overdrive in between the stars. The ship's two officers would be incredulous. They'd try to put the ship back into overdrive again; it would take a long time for them really to believe that their engines had failed. Such things just didn't happen!
But eventually they'd be forced to believe that theirs had failed. They'd have marvelled. They'd have been astounded. But they'd have turned confidently to the auxiliary drive and switched it into operation. It wouldn't work either.
The shock would be great. But officers were trained to know what to do even in such unprecedented states of things. They wouldn't actually panic. Ultimately they'd move to abandon ship. The discipline would be admirable. They'd distribute the ship's company among the lifeboats, and take all the other measures officially recommended for such emergencies - which nobody believed could ever happen. In this case they'd even piously take with them the most valuable and portable part of the ship's cargo, the currency. It wouldn't occur to them that the money was the cause of the engines' failure.
Understanding what had happened, however, was no guide to what to do. Horn's main concern was, naturally, for Ginny. She was in a lifeboat attempting to make the beacon planet Carola. Therefore Horn had to go to Carola immediately. He might have gotten away in a Theban boat, though it would be a journey considerably longer than Ginny was having to make. But it was impossible. He was no astrogator. Conceivably he could set a course for Carola, but more than that might be needed. If the Danae's space boats refuelled on Carola and went on from there, they'd take the stored fuel and Horn could not follow. And besides, he had to stay with the Theban in Larsen's pursuit of the lifeboats, in order to turn that pursuit into a rescue.
A day passed, two, three. The Theban drove for Carola. Horn knew that the lifeboats would have landed on Carola by now, if they, were ever going to land anywhere. The Theban had two more days' journey in overdrive before it could reach the other beacon planet.
Horn saw the wizened little engineer from time to time, always in the act of disappearing from sight. The engineer showed all the signs of a man who knows he is doomed. Larsen had certainly intended to kill him on Hermas. He'd made him take the spine-chilling job of boarding the Danae from space. He'd never let the little man leave the ship on an inhabited planet because of what the engineer could tell. So even bottles couldn't comfort the small man now. He talked fearfully to this crewman and that, and squirmed out of sight whenever he saw Horn.
It was the ship's cook who revealed what was in the minds of the rest of the crew. He brought coffee to Horn in the engineroom without being asked to do so. Having delivered it, he did not go away. Instead, with his eyes on the companion ladder leading up to the control room, he said in a low tone:
"A lot of us are worried. We was there at Hermas to land that Danae when it turned up derelict, an' to loot it. But then the skipper found out somethin' and started off for Carola. Didn't give us time to pick up what was there waitin' to be took."
Horn nodded. He said dryly, "I noticed it."
"There's talk," said the cook in a lower tone still, "that it was cash money he was after. Interstellar credit notes from one bank to another that were bein' carried by the Danae."
"That sort of shipment," said Horn, "has been known to be made."
"They say," said the cook, almost in a whisper, "it was forty million credits! In cash! An' when the boats left the Danae, they took it with 'em. That's why we're goin' after 'em."
Horn blinked. He hadn't told this. Larsen and the red-headed mate were the only ones who had known it, originally, besides himself. But now it was known to the crew. They wouldn't have known even of the shipment unless told, much less its removal in the Danae's lifeboats. So -
"That could explain a lot," said Horn. He waited.
"It's a lot of cash," said the cook. He searched Horn's face and then said furtively, "D'you think the skipper'll divide it up if he gets it?"
"No," said Horn flatly.
"We're worried too," said the cook. "An' - we're worried about the engines. How about them?"
"They'll hold together if I make them," said Horn. "Not otherwise."
The cook looked again at the companion ladder and then said in extreme unease, "Uh - if the skipper gets that money -"
"If he does," said Horn coldly, "there'll be the devil to pay. If he keeps it in his own hands, you'll talk about mutiny and think you'll get up the nerve to try it and take it for yourselves. But you won't. Or if he divides it, you'll start gambling among yourselves. The first man to go broke will kill somebody who isn't broke and start gambling again. The odds are that Larsen will keep the money and finally kick you out and keep it for himself. That's what I'd do!"
The cook still looked enormously uneasy, but not as uneasy as before. Something close to gratification diluted his unease. He nodded as to a fellow conspirator. "That's right! That's right! That's what he'll do if he can!" He paused for a long minute and then said confidentially, 'We'll talk about this some more, huh? We'll see what we can work out?"
"No," said Horn sardonically. "You tell the skipper you sounded me out, but that I'm not joining any schemes to murder all but the members of a small, select group, who would then begin to murder each other. I'm not joining up with anybody. Not yet!"
The cook's mouth dropped open. It was amazement that Horn had penetrated the actual meaning of his proposed plot. But it was the most obvious thing in the world, to Horn, that conspiracies and counter-conspiracies must begin when the size of the Danae's treasure was known. It was even more certain that Larsen would be the first to start such conspiracies.
The cook went away and Horn turned back to the engines. He was engaged in as much of an engine overhaul as was possible without cutting the drive. But Riccardo drives had been developed with the need for repairs in mind. Many of the engines' component parts had been installed in pairs, of which one could keep the drive going. It had been considered ingenious at the time, but in practice it made the engines inordinately bulky and complex. But Horn was grateful for it now. Because of the overhaul possibilities, if he could get Larsen and the others under control and Ginny and the rest of the castaways aboard, there might be a fair chance of reaching Formalhaut. But he painstakingly arranged that only he could keep the engines going.
The noises of the drive did not diminish, though they changed from time to time. Some of the new sounds were deliberately made by Horn. One or two had him sweating before he found their causes. The Theban's engines had been incredibly neglected. The little engineer had been bluffing when he signed on to keep them going. He'd never been a competent man. Perhaps he'd never actually been certificated. Horn suspected, and he believed that Larsen was now sure, that the engineer had got himself the post only because he needed money for his bottles, and that he would ultimately have sacrificed his own life and that of all the tramp's crew to his personal necessity for drink.