Until now Hansen had remained in the background, obviously amused by the interchange of nonsense. The two older Councilmen had been too full of Lucky Starr even to be aware of his existence.
"Dr. Conway," said Lucky, "Dr. Henree, this is Mr. Joseph P. Hansen, the man whose ship I used to come back. He has been of considerable assistance to me."
The old hermit shook hands with the two scientists.
"I don't suppose you can possibly know Drs. Conway and Henree," said Lucky. The hermit shook his head.
"Well," he went on, "they're important officials in the Council of Science. After you've eaten and had a chance to rest, they'll talk to you and help you, I'm sure."
An hour later the two Councilmen faced Lucky with somber expressions. Dr. Henree tamped tobacco into his pipe with a little finger, and smoked quietly as he listened to Lucky's accounts of his adventures with the pirates.
"Have you told this to Bigman?" he asked.
"I've just spent some time talking to him," said Lucky.
"And he didn't assault you for not taking him?"
"He wasn't pleased," Lucky admitted.
But Conway's mind was more seriously oriented. "A Sirian-designed ship, eh?" he mused.
"Undoubtedly so," said Lucky. "At least we have that piece of information."
"The information wasn't worth the risk," said Conway, dryly. "I'm much more disturbed over another piece of information we have now. It's obvious that the Sirian organization penetrates into the Council of Science itself."
Henree nodded gravely. "Yes, I saw that, too. Very bad."
Lucky said, "How do you make that out?"
"Galaxy, boy, it's obvious," growled Conway. "I'll admit that we had a large construction crew working on the ship and that even with the best intentions careless slips of information can take place. It remains truth, though, that the fact of the booby-trapping and particularly the exact manner of the fusing were known only to Council members and not too many of those. Somewhere in that small group is a spy, yet I could have sworn that all were faithful." He shook his head. "I still can't believe otherwise."
"You don't have to," said Lucky.
"Oh? And why not?"
"Because the Sirian contact was quite temporary. The Sirian Embassy got their information from me"
Chapter 8
Bigman Takes Over
"Indirectly, of course, through one of their known spies," he amplified, as the two older men stared at him in shocked astonishment.
"I don't understand you at all," said Henree in a low voice. Conway was obviously speechless.
"It was necessary. I had to introduce myself to the pirates without suspicion. If they found me on what they thought was a mapping ship, they would have shot me out of hand. On the other hand, if they found me on a booby-trapped ship the secret of which they had stumbled on by what seemed a stroke of fortune, they would have taken me at face value as a stowaway. Don't you see? On a mapping ship I'm only a member of the crew that didn't get away in time. On a booby trap, I'm a poor jerk who didn't realize what he was stowing away on."
"They might have shot you anyway. They might have seen through your double-cross and considered you a spy. In fact, they almost did."
"True! They almost did," admitted Lucky.
Conway finally exploded. "And what about the original plan. Were we or were we not going to explode one of their bases? When I consider the months we spent on the construction of the Atlas, the money that went into it-"
"What good would it have done to explode one of their bases? We spoke about a huge hangar of pirate ships, but actually that was only wishful thinking. An organization based upon the asteroids would have to be decentralized. The pirates probably don't have more than three or four ships in any one place. There wouldn't be room for more. Exploding three or four ships would mean very little compared with what would have been accomplished if I had succeeded in penetrating their organization."
"But you didn't succeed," said Conway. "With all your fool risks, you didn't succeed."
"Unfortunately the pirate captain who took the Atlas was too suspicious, or perhaps too intelligent for us. I'll try not to underestimate them again. But it's not all loss. We know for a fact that Sirius is behind them. In addition, we have my hermit friend."
"He won't help us," said Conway. "From what you've said about him, it sounds as though he were only interested in having as little to do with the pirates as possible. So what can he know?"
"He may be able to tell us more than he himself thinks is possible," said Lucky coolly. "For instance, there's one piece of information he can give us that will enable me to continue efforts at working against piracy from the inside."
"You're not going out there again," said Conway hastily.
"I don't intend to," said Lucky.
Conway's eyes narrowed. "Where's Bigman?"
"On Ceres. Don't worry. In fact," and a shadow crossed Lucky's face, "he should be here by now. The delay is beginning to bother me a little."
John Bigman Jones used his special pass card to get past the guard at the door to the Control Tower. He was muttering to himself as he half-ran along the corridors.
The slight flush on his pug-nosed face dimmed his freckles and his reddish hair stood up in tufts like fence pickets. Lucky had frequently told him he cultivated a vertical hair-do to make himself look taller, but he always denied that vigorously.
The final door to the Tower swung open as he broke the photoelectric beam. He stepped inside and looked about.
Three men were on duty. One with earphones sat at the sub-etheric receiver, another was at the calculating machine and the third was at the curved radarized visi-plate.
Bigman said, "Which one of you knotbrains called me Shortie?"
The three turned toward him in unison, their faces startled and scowling.
The man with the earphones pulled one away from his left ear. "Who in space are you? How the dickens did you get in here?"
Bigman stood erect and puffed out his small chest. "My name is John Bigman Jones. My friends call me Bigman. Everyone else calls me Mr. Jones. Nobody calls me Shortie and stays in one piece. I want to know which one of you made that mistake."
The man with the earphones said, "My name is Lem Fisk and you can call me anything you blame please as long as you do it somewhere else. Get out of here, or I'll come down, pick you up by one leg, and toss you out."
The fellow at the calculating machine said, "Hey, Lem, that's the crackpot who was haunting the port a while back. There's no point in wasting time on him. Get the guards to throw him out."
"Nuts," said Lem Fisk, "we don't need guards for that
guy." He took off his earphones altogether and set the sub-
etherics at automatic signal. He said, "Well, son, you came in here and asked us a nice question in a nice way. I'll give you a nice answer. I called you Shortie, but wait, don't get mad. I had a reason. You see you're such a real tall fellow. You're such a long drink of water. You're such a high-pockets. It makes my friends laugh to hear me call you Shortie."
He reached into his hip pocket and drew out a plastic container of cigarettes. The smile on his face was bland.
"Come down here," yelled Bigman. "Come down here and back up your sense of humor with a couple of fists."
"Temper, temper," said Fisk, clucking his tongue. "Here, boy, have a cigarette. King-size, you know. Almost as long as you are. Liable to create some confusion, though, come to think of it. We won't be able to tell whether you're smoking the cigarette or the cigarette is smoking you."
The other two Tower men laughed vigorously.
Bigman was a passionate red. Words came thickly to his tongue. "You won't fight?"
"I'd rather smoke. Pity you don't join me." Fisk leaned back, chose a cigarette, and held it before his face as though admiring its slim whiteness. "After all, I can't be bothered to fight children."