If it were found and challenged, it would not hear the challenge. It wouldn’t know of threats. At any instant an angry spaceman; yards only from the lifeboat, might carry out a threat to destroy it. A bazooka shell could detonate against its hull now, or now, or now, because it did not answer threats or promises.
Nike swallowed. Then she said unsteadily, “This feels queer!”
Dunne nodded. He said drily, “It’s a nasty feeling. They know we’re somewhere in the Rings. They know we’re coasting. But they’ve no idea in what direction or how fast. And every one of them is scouring space for us alone. They’re not cooperating. They don’t trust each other. They can’t. Here in the Rings it isn’t possible to be a pleasant character. We’re here to get rich before we’re killed. We may be killed by accident, or by somebody who wants something we’ve got. If we do get rich, it may be by accident, or by taking something somebody else has got. We’re not nice people, here in the Rings!”
She moistened her lips. “My brother said something about it. But he made it seem like—adventure. Danger, yes, but thrills. And he said that you—”
“He was trying to keep you from worrying,” Dunne said in the same dry tone. “So he praised me. But a man doesn’t live long in the Rings if he practices many of the virtues. If every man here were, noble and self-sacrificing and helpful to the rest, it would be a very nice business. But put one cutthroat among the lot of us, and we all have to turn cutthroat in self-defense. So we’re a pack of scoundrels.”
The lifeboat floated on. Nothing happened. Outside, in the mist, many donkeyships blundered about trying to make something happen. They sheered off from each other’s drive-fields because they did not want to find each other, but the lifeboat. Hours went by. Two. Four. Ten. Sixteen.
“H-hadn’t we better—listen?” asked Nike. “To see if there is anybody—?”
“No,” said Dunne. “This is not pleasant, though I’m getting used to it. But they won’t think we could possibly wait this long without trying to find out how we stand in the chase. That’s why we have to do it.”
Again there was silence and stress and unrelieved tension. The inside of the spaceboat was brightly lighted. There were no viewports in the cabin section. There was nothing that needed to be done. There was nothing that could be done except wait. And waiting was a horrible, unending strain. The lifeboat had undoubtedly appeared as a blip on more than one radar screen among the searching donkeyships. But it radiated nothing. It merely floated in shining emptiness. So far they’d disregarded it. But if any other ship came near enough, it could be seen through the mist. If it were seen, angry men would demand that Dunne lead the way immediately to the Big Rock Candy Mountain—or die. And he couldn’t lead them there.
There was one alternate possible happening, though. Haney might blunder within the distance in which the lifeboat could be seen visually. He’d not waste time demanding anything. He’d destroy the lifeboat while they did not even know he was near.
Twenty hours after Dunne had cut off all contact with the cosmos outside the lifeboat’s hull, Nike said nervously, “Certainly it wouldn’t do any harm to look out the viewports!”
“No harm,” agreed Dunne. “But very little good.”
Nike went into the control room. She looked out each of the ports in turn. She saw nothing but the featureless dust-mist outside. Perhaps she could see half a mile, but she couldn’t tell. There was nothing on which to focus one’s eyes. The rings were unsubstantial. There was nothing real to look at. The haze was so completely uniform that the viewports might have been closed by blankets-lighted from behind-in contact with their transparent plastic. It was as nerve-racking as a blindfold would have been. It seemed that at any instant some dark shape must appear, swimming through the fog…
She went back to the main cabin, shivering.
“It’s—awful,” she said shakily.
“You could get used to it,” Dunne told her. “You’re already used to things you couldn’t have imagined on the way to Outlook. The thing is, you can adjust—even to being scared.”
She stared at him. “I can’t imagine you frightened!”
“Say, uncomfortable, then,” he told her. “The longer we stay undiscovered, the better our chances of staying undiscovered. I think the odds are well in our favor, now.”
She was silent. He looked at his watch.
“In an hour I’ll try listening in on the universe,” he said. “If there’s nothing to hear, I think we can go about our business. We’ll have lost our trailers. And, as it happens, I think we’re not too far from where we’re bound.”
“You mean we can go and get my brother?”
He nodded. But he did not look at her. “We can try.”
“And then—he can go back to Horus with me?”
“If you want to try it in this lifeboat. I wouldn’t like to try it—without extra supplies. It’s a long run. A lot depends on how many crystals he’s found. The next pickup ship would be a better way to travel. I pretty well cleaned our account with the Minerals Commission to get this boat. If your trouble calls for money—”
“I don’t know what it calls for,” said Nike unhappily. “I have to ask him.”
Dunne nodded grimly. He began to pace up and down the cabin of the lifeboat. There was much more room here than in a donkeyship. But a donkeyship was built for highly special work in a highly special environment. The mining of abyssal crystals from their gray matrix required operations quite unlike the proper demands on a space-liner’s lifeboats.
The hour he’d mentioned went by. It seemed to last for centuries. Then Dunne went into the control room. He looked out the viewports, without expectation. He flipped on the communicator. Moments later, he turned on the radar.
He saw nothing but mist out the viewports. The radar showed nothing especially menacing. The communicator picked up only appropriate sounds, faint rustling sounds that came by short-wave from the sun. Small, crackling, crashing sounds considered to be lightning bolts in the atmosphere of the planet Thothmes. That was all.
No. There was a faint series of sounds from the speaker. They weren’t drive-noises. They were musical. The effect was eerie. The sounds were barely audible, monotonous, “tweet… tweet… tweet…”
They stopped abruptly. Nike barely whispered. “That’s the same sound…”
“Supposedly,” said Dunne, “it’s the noise of a gook ship, creeping about the Rings to spy on us men and snipe at us when the chance comes.” He added humorously, “Anyhow, that’s supposed to be the reason donkeyships sometimes vanish without explanation.”
He felt a certain definite reluctance to do what he now must do. He hadn’t wanted Nike to think of any possible linkage between the blowing up of his donkeyship and what happened to Keyes, guarding the rock-fragment that was too valuable to be left unwatched. He’d thrust the suspicion away from his own mind as well as he could, but it was back.
The drive of the lifeboat began its moaning, humming sound. The boat surged ahead. He set the controls. He watched the radar screen, again working. He listened to the speaker over his head. Nike stood just behind him. He stood still, watching and listening, his hands unconsciously clenching and unclenching because he was very much afraid of what he was going to find out. He was fairly confident of his astrogation, but he didn’t like to think of what it might lead him to.
Presently, at the very utmost limit of the radar’s range, there was the beginning of an indication of something solid. Dunne swung the lifeboat in that exaggerated fashion needed for a change of course in space.