It was plausible. Had someone else made the offer, it might even be attractive. To take a man to and from his working—his mine—for half his take while there… It wasn’t bad under the circumstances. But Haney didn’t insist on the Mountain’s discovery, which might mean that he knew the facts. He might know what they’d found. And there was no assurance at all that he’d keep to such a bargain. Dunne knew better. There was no law in the Rings. There was nothing but his own self-respect to make a man keep a bargain when he could profit by breaking it.
And there was the girl Nike, She definitely shouldn’t go off in Haney’s donkeyship.
Dunne said, “No.”
He let it go at that. Haney grimaced inside his helmet. He moved away. His partner was already stowing the supplies purchased for their ship. Haney went to his partner and touched helmets with him, for conversation not to be picked up by the pickup ship or Dunne.
Haney went back to the pickup ship. He mounted the ship-ladder. His partner completed getting stores aboard.
Something made Dunne stare after Haney. Nike was desperate to find her brother. Some. unimaginable emergency had driven her to ask to go into. the Rings with Dunne, to find her brother and to keep from traveling back to Horus and then back out to Outlook again. She didn’t realize how dangerous such a thing would be. She’d never been where there was no law and order. She couldn’t imagine the risks a completely lawless environment implied. They were bad enough for a man. They’d be impossible for a girl. But she was desperate, or thought she was. She’d have risked trusting herself to Dunne. When he refused to take her, had she tried to make a bargain with Haney?
Dunne began to cross the spaceport above which the golden haze hovered perpetually. He saw the pickup ship’s personnel lock again. He noted that Haney’s stores were all aboard, and his partner was in the act of dogging the lock-door shut.
Haney came out of the pickup ship. Behind him there came another figure in a space-suit. Haney helped it down the ladder with exaggerated chivalry—but there was need of assistance, at that. The first time one uses magnetized shoes in no gravity, clumsiness is inevitable.
Dunne leaped, with his belt-jet for propulsion and guidance. He went soaring across the relatively level metal plain. He landed with a clank, facing Haney savagely. He turned on his helmet-phone and said coldly;
“Oh, no, you don’t! Nike, back into the pickup ship! Haney, get into your ship and get to hell away from here!”
Haney had to raise his own hand to make his own helmet-communicator go on. Dunne watched sharply. He saw the girl’s eyes turn, and faced himself so Haney was between Dunne and Haney’s. partner. Haney’s partner was in the airlock with a bazooka in his hand.
“If your partner pulls trigger on that thing,” said Dunne icily, “you’ll be blown apart before the shell gets here.”
Haney protested, “She wants to find her brother! You won’t take her! So she asked me to take her. Why not?”
Dunne’s voice was very deadly indeed. “Because if you know where to take her, you’ll be the man with a reason to blow up my ship so I can’t get back there! If you know where Keyes is, all you have to do is stop me from getting to him and you’ll have the rock we’re working!”
The pickup ship would hear all this, of course. The helmet-phones carried for miles.
“Say it,” snapped Dunne. “If you know where to take her—if you know where her brother is—say it!”
His belt-weapon bore upon Haney’s middle. It was a weapon of ancient design, because there was no need for anything more deadly than a missile-weapon in space. A space-suit puncture anywhere was a mortal wound. Blasters suitable for use in atmosphere could do no more than kill. And the blasters were bulky and leaked their charges. In a fire-fight over a source of abyssal crystals, an automatic pistol firing lead bullets was actually to be preferred to a blaster. It was always charged and it fired faster and it could be recharged without a return to a source of power.
Dunne thrust his weapon deeper into Haney’s middle.
“Where’ll you take her?” he raged. “Where!”
Haney’s voice went shrill.
“I was—I was going to look for him,” he panted. “I—I tried to get you to go along to show the way. But y’wouldn’t go, so I was goin’ to look for him as best I could.”
“With her aboard. But you’re not going to do it now, Haney!” Dunne’s voice was thick with fury. “Are you? You’re not going to take her off into the Rings and come back next pickup-ship time and say she died. Are you? You’re not going to take her.”
“No!” panted Haney, more shrilly than before. “No! I ain’t! I give it up! I wouldn’t do nothing like that.”
“Then move!” rasped Dunne. He was acutely aware that he could pull the trigger and kill Haney, and that absolutely nothing would be done to him as punishment, because these were the Rings. “Get to your ship and away! I’ll take care of getting to Keyes and picking him up. You—move!”
He stood shaking with fury as Haney stumbled to his ship. Haney wasn’t swaggering now. Once his partner moved as if to lift his bazooka. Dunne’s weapon came up. As a missile-gun it could be deadly accurate, because there was no gravity. Haney’s partner lowered his weapon with exemplary haste.
Haney climbed into his ship. The airlock door closed. It locked. The donkeyship floated free. It suddenly drove, accelerating swiftly. In seconds it bad vanished in the mist.
Dunne practically drove the girl up the companion-ladder and into the pickup ship. She was affrightedly silent. He didn’t speak until the inner lock-door opened and they were both inside the ship.
Then the girl said desperately, “But—there’s my brother! What are you going to do about him? Somebody has to go for him!”
Dunne nodded, his eyes still hot and angry.
“Somebody will. In fact, I will. You can come back next pickup ship and talk to him.”
“But how—what—I have to—”
Dunne was gone, tramping in his space-suit through the open space where the donkeymen had feasted. They were all gone now. It looked very much as if a hurricane had struck it. Dunne went through, looking for the skipper’s cabin.
He found it, and the skipper inside, with all the small bags of abyssal crystals neatly ticketed with their masses and owners. He looked up sharply when Dunne came in the door.
“I thought you might be interested,” said Dunne, “to hear how I’m going to get to my partner with oxygen and food so we can wait for the next pickup ship’s arrival.”
The skipper looked definitely skeptical. He swept the bags of crystal into a drawer, out of sight. As he did so, Dunne plucked a bazooka-shell from his belt and began to toss it thoughtfully from one hand to the other. The skipper jumped.
“Put that thing away!” he snapped.
“Presently,” said Dunne. “Let me explain. I had a donkeyship. It’s been blown up. That leaves my partner marooned. I haven’t any way to get back to him and keep him alive until you or another pickup ship comes back.”
“I can’t help that!” said the skipper. He added sharply, “Put that thing away! If you drop it—.”
“I won’t let it fall,” Dunne promised. “I even juggle! Look!”
He brought out a second bazooka-shell from its pocket in his space-suit belt. He began to juggle the two of them, more or less competently. The pickup skipper’s face began to turn slowly white. A bazooka-shell is a tiny rocket, with a fuel-load that detonates as a shaped charge when it hits something. If Dunne should drop one of those small spinning objects, weighing only ounces, the result would be rather like a hundred-pound demolition charge exploding in the skipper’s cabin. It might not break so large a ship into pieces, but it would never be able to make its way back to Horus.