"Do you think you can keep the engines running?" asked the cook uncertainly.
"I can keep them going longer than your engineer can," said Horn. "But how long that will be, or when time will run out, I can't tell you."
The cook shivered. "The skipper's a tough man. When he starts to do something -"
"Keeping these engines going is a tough job," said Horn.
The cook licked his lips. "We're headed for Hermas now. Will we get there?"
Horn grunted. "Hermas? Why? It's only a beacon. There was a manned station on it once, but they pulled the crew off long ago. Why go there?"
The cook watched as Horn sipped his coffee. "We were goin' there before. We landed at Carola, and we was goin' to land on Hermas, but the engines acted up. The engineer said he couldn't fix 'em. The skipper beat the devil outa him when he said we had to go to Formalhaut for repairs. But we went. Then we couldn't get the repairs quick enough, so you got picked up to make 'em. Now we're headin' back. The skipper's in a hurry. He took a chance on you to save time."
Horn stiffened. Carola and Herinas were beacon planets on the ship lane the Danae would follow to Formalhaut. Ginny would be on the Danae, and he'd be on Hermas when her ship went by. But Larsen was in a furious hurry to get to Hermas by the time the Danae did pass by. It could be coincidence, but Horn was suspicious of fate and destiny, which had promised him Ginny to be with for always, and could mock him -
Why should Larsen want the Theban at a particular place the Danae would pass, at exactly the time the Danae should go by? And why had the Theban landed on Carola? "What are you going to Hermas for?" demanded Horn. "Or Carola? They're beacons, nothing more. They're uninhabited; there's nothing to go there for. And what's the hurry?"
The cook said uneasily, "The skipper don't do things without a good reason."
He went away, more than a little scared by Horn's refusal to guarantee the engines' indefinite operation. He vanished down the ladder to the air room and the galley below that.
Horn found himself tense all over. He'd been worried about Ginny before he was shanghaied. He'd imagined things happening to the Danae, and hence to Ginny, all along the light years of distance between every port and beacon of the ship lanes the Danae would follow. Even the fact that he'd been shanghaied had been more enraging because it meant he wouldn't be at the spaceport to meet Ginny. He'd considered his own danger as a possible cause of distress to Ginny. But this suggested that Ginny was in greater danger than himself!
He couldn't be sure of it, of course. It might be pure accident that a skipper who wouldn't stop at kidnapping had plans for which he risked the lives of everybody aboard his ship, and that those plans required him to be at a place at the time Ginny passed by it. It could be coincidence and nothing more. But Horn had even been worrying about the normal risks of interstellar travelling for Ginny. It was inevitable that he would feel a desperate anxiety now.
It was actually something to worry about. The Danae would normally break out of overdrive both at Carola and at Hermas. She wouldn't land on either, of course. They were simply the beacons on one of the space lanes that had been surveyed and declared safe for space traffic. There were neither meteor streams nor dust clouds along this path. There were no dark stars to be watched for.
So ships followed those lanes with pious care, painstakingly coming out of overdrive at each beacon to verify that they were on course and - should any new danger have developed - to receive recorded warnings of it. There were beacons on inhabited worlds as well as on planets of no other use to humanity. Each beacon was fuelled for years and steadily sent out signals, by Wrangel waves, which could be picked up by a ship even in overdrive. The Danae would depend on such planet falls to be assured of its safety on the way. But the Theban -
Larsen had violated spaceport rules in taking off from Formalhaut without clearance. He'd violated other laws by kidnapping Horn. And there were the guards at the gate, and perhaps the grid operator. He'd done these things to be where the Danae would pass, at the time when it would come out of overdrive.
Horn's flesh crawled. He was not unduly disturbed by the knowledge that Larsen must plan to kill him rather than let him report his abduction. Temporarily, though, Larsen needed him alive and nursing the engines. But Horn dismissed his own situation because he was frantically absorbed in trying to figure out Larsen's plan as it affected Ginny.
Larsen came down the companion ladder from the control room. He scowled at Horn. "Look here!" he rasped. "You want a deal? Okay, try this. Join up with us in this business I'm working, and there'll be two million credits in it for you. Two million! The rest's for us. You keep the engines going, and you get two million in interstellar credit notes when we're a month's ship run away from Hermas. That's the deal. I'm giving you the engineer's cut. He's no good; he goes out an air lock sooner or later. How about it?"
Horn pretended to think it over. "I'll let you know," he said with some reserve. "Let me find out what shape the engines are in. And I'd better know what the business is."
Larsen clenched and unclenched his hands. "Take it or leave it!" he rasped. "But first figure out what happens if you leave it."
He went up the companion ladder. Horn felt as if he were growing very pale. It wasn't likely that Larsen would keep any bargain with a man he'd shanghaied, and who could make trouble for him if he talked. But the offer was almost mockingly extravagant. In fact, it was incredible. There were many supposedly respectable men who would commit any crime for a lot less than two million credits. And Horn already had an idea that on the Theban the price of a murder would be very much less. Very, very much less!
The value of the lives on the Danae, including Ginny's wouldn't be much either. Not the way Larsen would look at it.
CHAPTER THREE
IT was a three days' run from Formalhaut to Hermas. Horn had been unconscious for the first few hours from a stun pistol bolt received at the spaceport gate. But an hour after recovering consciousness he'd become the unofficial but actual engineer of the Theban, and was supposedly considering the former engineer's cut of an undescribed enterprise. It was understood that the small man would go out of an air lock for his incompetence. It was an atmosphere and a set of values Horn wasn't used to. But the Theban wasn't used to his way of thinking, either.
He stood watch over the engines. At appropriate intervals the cook brought him food and coffee. When he asked questions he got noncommittal answers. The Theban sped towards Hermas on an errand about which Horn could get no definite clues. Other members of the crew dropped by occasionally to talk. They were afraid of Larsen, yet they were oddly proud of being members of his crew. They regarded Horn as a permanently enlisted member of their group.
Some considered that, having been chosen by Larsen, Horn should be filled in on the traditions, manners, and customs of the Theban. There was no crime not proudly claimed as part of the legendry of the space tramp, and Horn was expected to admire these practices. But there were one or two crew members who doubted that Horn realized why he must obey Larsen under any imaginable set of circumstances. They explained the monstrous sadistic pleasure Larsen took in brutality. They described in detail the battering any recalcitrant crew member might expect for failure in his duty. None of them quite grasped what Larsen angrily accepted - that the continued running of the Theban's engines depended on Horn's good will. He couldn't be driven.
On the second day of the drive towards Hermas, the engineer reappeared with a ghastly hangover. He jittered over the state of the engines. He was shocked that they were neither better nor worse than they had been. He searched desperately for changes in the multitude of emergency repair jobs by which the drive had been kept running until now. He found some, but they were unimportant. He thought there were others, but he could not be sure.